Come and See NSI at AMTA 2009

NSI will kickoff this year’s AMTA symposium by hosting the Sunday Night Reception on November 1 from 6 to 7:30 pm at Grand America Hotel.  The Grand America Hotel is Salt Lake City's premier AAA 5-Diamond Award hotel located across the street from the Little America Hotel, where the AMTA conference and exhibition will take place.  Please join us Sunday evening for appetizers and cocktails, to catch up with old friends, and make new acquaintances.

NSI will present seven technical papers at this year's AMTA symposium.

NSI will showcase the following live systems at our exhibit in the Wyoming room of the Little America Hotel.

Plane polar near field system:  A Low cost, high speed near-field measurement system optimized for accurate, high gain antenna characterization. We will also be demonstrating a new motion control system.

NSI-700S-90 Swing Arm Spherical System:  See how measurement speed can be significantly improved by NSI’s new feature of continuous Phi axis rotation on a spherical near-field system.

NSI-200V-3x3 Planar, Cylindrical and Spherical System:  NSI has extended the NSI proprietary scattering suppression (MARS) technique from spherical to cylindrical near-field systems. This live demonstration illustrates the accuracy improvement that can be achieved on spherical and cylindrical measurements using MARS. Agilent’s latest PNA-X receiver will be the RF system used for this demonstration.

NSI-700S-10 50GHz Spherical System: This cost effective, compact system is ideal for small antenna measurements that do not require a large space or an expensive high performance chamber.

Please stop by our booth at AMTA 2009 to see what’s new at NSI. We look forward to seeing you in Salt Lake City!

The Allen C. Newell Near-field Antenna Measurement Facility Dedication

A dedication & ribbon cutting ceremony was held on August 20, 2009 to mark the official opening of NSI’s new near-field measurement antenna facility in Torrance, CA. This state-of-the-art measurement facility is capable of measuring a variety of antennas from 400 MHz up to 50 GHz in frequency, and will be used for contract testing as well as internal development work. This facility was named in honor of Allen Newell in recognition of the many contributions he has made to the development of near-field measurement technologies, and his untiring service to NSI and the antenna measurement community. Allen’s family and the NSI staff were on hand to celebrate this significant event. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), one of the first customers to use this facility for developmental work on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, presented Allen with a Certificate of Participation in this program; his name will be included on a microchip on the rover headed to Mars in 2011. Allen joked about all the time he spent working on NSI’s Mathematical Absorber Reflection Suppression technique [MARS] and now he truly is going to Mars! In addition to the development of MARS, Allen has been instrumental in the planning and verification of NSI’s new measurement facility. Additional information regarding NSI”s antenna measurement facility & testing capabilities can be found on our website. Please contact the NSI sales department for information on renting this facility or to request a quotation for antenna testing services.

NSI Introduces New Arch/Roll Spherical Near-field, NSI-700S-300

The new NSI-700S-300 Spherical Near-Field Arch Roll Scanner, together with NSI’s Panther 9000 RF subsystem and industry leading NSI 2000 antenna test and measurement software, delivers spherical near-field measurement accuracies rivaling those previously obtained only with planar scanning techniques.

The new NSI-700S-300 scanner, unlike traditional Spherical Near-Field systems that require moving the antenna under test in either one or two axes, uses an innovative probe motion technique to characterize stationary antennas. The new NSI scanner is ideally suited for precision testing of satellite or radar antennas that require a fixed position throughout the testing process.

The NSI-700S-300 features a scanning arch that provides accurate probe motion over an extended hemispherical scan area of ± 95 degrees in theta axis and 360 degrees in phi. The system incorporates a dynamic on-the-fly probe position correction subsystem to maintain probe position accuracy on the order of 0.0025” (63 micron), and supports multi-beam, multi-frequency control of the RF subsystem. A phi-axis scan speed of 30 degrees per second results in very fast scan-acquisition times.

As a result of this new product introduction, NSI has developed several new capabilities that will be used to enhance the performance of existing products including the Panther 9000 receiver, NSI 2000 software, and motion control systems.

For more information on the NSI-700S-300 and other NSI products, visit the NSI website at www.nearfield.com or contact us directly.

NSI-700S-300 Arch Roll Spherical Near-field Scanner

NSI Participates in Regional AMTA Event

NSI was an exhibitor and key sponsor for the annual AMTA Regional Event held on September 14th at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Baltimore, MD.  NSI’s Daniel Janse van Rensburg presented "Sub-millimeter Wave Planar Near-field Antenna Testing" to approximately 50 registrants and exhibitors who were in attendance. AMTA began hosting one day events several years ago in an effort to bring the latest technology related to RF and antenna measurement techniques to the local community.  Experts in the industry share practical information on various topics through an extended presentation format.  This year’s technical program focused on “Advances in Antenna Test and Measurement Techniques”, and was hosted by Cessily Greene of Northrop Grumman and Steve Ferguson of Washington Labs.  A highlight of this event was the reception with the speakers held at the conclusion of the technical program.  The reception was held in the exhibit area and featured a great appetizer buffet, full bar, and raffle prizes donated by the exhibitors.  Click here to see photos from this and other AMTA sponsored events.

Sign Up Now for the Near-field Short Course

We will once again be offering our annual Short Course at our NSI headquarters in Torrance, CA on March 2 – 5, 2010.   This extensive four day course, presented by our resident NSI experts, covers a multitude of topics pertaining to near-field theory and measurement techniques.  This is a great opportunity for existing users to learn more about their systems and current testing techniques, as well as introducing prospective, new users to antenna near-field measurements.  Seats are limited and available on a first come, first serve basis so make your reservations early.  

See photos from the 2009 course at right.

The course brochure and registration form for the NSI Short Course can be downloaded from our our website at http://www.nearfield.com/ShortCourses.htm.

NSI Short Course 2009

Daniel Janse van Rensburg conducting a live demonstration

Simplify Test Report Generation Using NSI 2000 Scripting Capability

NSI’s scripting feature, included with our NSI 2000 Professional Edition Antenna Measurement Software, can be used for a variety of applications such as test automation, creating user defined graphical interfaces for your custom features, and extending our software capabilities through interfaces with other COM based applications.  An example of how another application can be used to interface with the NSI scripting feature is demonstrated in our Active Test Procedure, which uses a Microsoft Word document to post-process NSI data files and store the results in test report format. This feature can be extended to automatically perform various analysis tasks and pass/fail criteria determination for specified measurement parameters. Click here for additional information regarding the Active Test Procedure.

Please visit our website at http://www.nearfield.com/sales/software.htm to learn more about our NSI 2000 scripting feature, or contact us to find out how NSI scripting can be used to enhance and/or simplify your measurement application.

See NSI at other tradeshows and short courses during 2009.

Learn More About Near-field Antenna Measurements

If you've wondered about near-field measurements and whether they can improve your antenna measurements, see NSI's Near-field 101 page for a short tutorial on near-field measurements or view our on-line videos at http://www.nearfield.com/AMTV/index.htm.