Electromagnetic Reverberation Chambers

Introduction

Before introducing the motivation and the content of this book, we will carry out a brief retrospective of the advent of reverberation chambers in electromagnetism.

The first experiments recounting the confinement of electromagnetic waves in a reverberation chamber probably date back to 1976. We will find the details of these experiments in a publication by P. Corona from the Naval Academic Institute of Naples (Italy). The objective of these precursory works was above all the measurement of the radio source emissions. It was then demonstrated that the wave confinement led to a direct evaluation of the total power radiated by the object. At this moment there are two competing theories: one considers that the electromagnetic power in the chamber is mainly governed by the resonance mechanisms and the second considers the emission as the radiation of the blackbody, imported from the statistic thermodynamics [COR 76a, COR 76b, COR 02].

Together with the research led and carried out by P. Corona, reverberation chambers were already being developed in the United States. Around 1980, we may mention the building of a chamber at the National Institute of Standard and Technologies (formerly called the National Bureau of Standards), where the theory of the stirred modes was founded, borrowed from the statistical analyses. We find this approach in many publications, notably written by M. Crawford, G. Koepke, T. Lehman. The physical-statistical analysis was then continued by works ...