Over-the-Air Noise Figure Characterization of mm-Wave Active Integrated Antennas Using a Reverberation Chamber

—Active integrated antennas are used in low-noise receivers for their good noise performance compared to their non-integrated counterparts. However, it is challenging to accurately determine one of these antennas’ most important characteristics: the noise figure. To overcome the dependencies of existing methods, we show a new method that can estimate the noise figure of a wireless system over-the-air, using a reverberation chamber. By using the reverberation chamber, we could create a consistent and repeatable measurement environment. Since this method characterizes the noise figure of the total system, it also includes factors such as noise matching. An extensive uncertainty analysis shows that the noise figure can be determined within only 0.7 dB expanded uncertainty in the frequency range from 21 to 29 GHz.