The 60 foot anechoic chamber is 19 ft tall x 20 ft wide x 60 ft long. The chamber surfaces are lined with pyramidal microwave absorber using 18" absorber on the ceiling and floors and 24" absorber on the walls. This enables the range to be used at frequencies of 1 GHz and above.
The chamber is situated approximately 10 ft below ground and can be accessed through a ground level anteroom with double doors into the chamber and a crane for lifting hardware into the chamber. The 60 foot chamber uses a 5-ton mono-rail crane with a reach of 3/4 of the length of the room. The ground level temperature controlled anteroom is approximately 18 foot x 18 foot with a 10 foot ceiling and has a roll-up door access.
The chamber can also be accessed through a set of range level double doors into an assembly room. This assembly room is accessible using a service elevator for smaller equipment.
The chamber has a separate control room which houses the control electronics for the measurement system. The primary test instrument in this chamber is the Nearfield Systems, Inc. NSI-300V-30x15 planar nearfield scanner, which supports a 13-ft by 30-ft horizontal rectangular scan region. It also includes a spherical near-field scanner that enables testing of lower gain antennas and for measurements where a more complete capture of the energy radiated by the antenna is necessary. The spherical scan positioner includes a NSI 700S-50 Upper AUT L-bracket Assembly which supports a NSI-SC-5635 phi-axis rotation stage with 55" (1.4 m) max AUT dimension and 165 lb. (75 kg) AUT load capacity. The L-bracket upper stage sits atop a NSI-SC-5638 theta-axis rotation stage.
The NSI-MI spherical / planar near-field scanner system provides measurements from 1.0 GHz through 50 GHz. The system is controlled by a turnkey NSI system that includes an NSI-MI receiver to support high speed multiplexed data collection, including polarization switch capability.