Rohde & Schwarz has upgraded its QAR – Quality Automotive Radome tester, which effectively analyzes & studies the radar compatibility of radomes and bumpers. The tester is tailored to heightened quality demands and performing intricate tasks. With the enhanced version of Rohde & Schwarz QAR-K50 single-cluster measurement software, it has now become simpler for OEM’s & Tier 1 supplier to obtain measurement results that are close enough to the results achieved by a vector network analyzer and a quasi-optical setup, but in a non-destructive and 2-dimensional way. Apart from this, the intuitive Rohde & Schwarz QAR operating concept has greatly benefitted the automotive sector.
The Rohde & Schwarz QAR is a wave imaging system that performs radome and bumper material testing and validation. With its outstanding performance, speed, quality and intuitive operation, the tester has successfully carved a place for itself in the market. And that’s exactly what makes it a perfect tool for applications that widely range from development and production to verification of radome material and integration of 76 GHz to 81 GHz radars.
Its high spatial resolution comes at the cost of having a larger spread in relation to incident angles. A typical radar sensor comprises a certain field of view, e.g. +/-10° for full-range (FRR) and +/-60° for short-range radars (SRR). Derived from material characterization techniques, the reflection parameters of radomes are mainly defined for perpendicular incident angles as these parameters can be measured using VNAs. The Rohde & Schwarz QAR-K50 software option is equipped with just all of it.
On comparing the results acquired by the Rohde & Schwarz QAR to those with a standard vector network analyzer (VNA) and a quasi-optical (QO) setup, some slight differences can be observed which can be addressed by the larger aperture used by the Rohde & Schwarz QAR. And this is where R&S QAR-K50 comes into the picture. It is enabled to automatically detect and capture the highest reflection from the material sample and averages over the test region. Then, the mean value for the reflection area is calculated and displayed to the user as the measurement result in less than 7 seconds. This value shows a close match with the S11 and S22 reflection measurement results of a VNA.
The measurements obtained from VNA and QO setups during R&D can now be directly compared with Rohde & Schwarz QAR measurements. As compared to VNA setups, using microwave imaging with smaller antenna aperture makes R&S QAR set up to be less sensitive to positioning errors and more suitable for production environments. The Rohde & Schwarz QAR-K50 software effectively detects the correct measurement area by itself and offers optical feedback to the operator in case the samples are not correctly positioned. Also, the measurement values achieved with the R&S QAR-K50 software option can be directly compared to the results delivered by VNAs in QO setups.
The Rohde & Schwarz QAR-K50 software option for single-cluster measurements can be installed on all Windows 10 instruments with most recent firmware using keycode activation. For more details, visit https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/in
