Experimental Verification of Phase Retrieval of Quasi-Optical Millimeter-Wave Beams

The accuracy of a phase-retrieval procedure for microwave beams was analyzed and verified using an 84-GHz quasi-optical beam transmitted by a corrugated waveguide. The output intensity and phase profiles of the beam were directly measured with a microwave receiver. The beam intensity was also measured at several planes and the data were used with a phase-retrieval algorithm to yield an independent estimate of the phase. Moment and matching coefficient methods were used to analyze the retrieved profiles. In the higher order moment analysis, the intensity profiles, which were calculated from the retrieved phase profiles, coincided well with the measured profiles in terms of the beam size, asymmetric property (skewness), and flatness/peakedness (kurtosis) over the entire profile. Analysis indicated that the mode content of the beam obtained by phase retrieval matched that of the direct measurement with a matching coefficient of 0.97 using both the intensity and phase profiles