System and method for calibration, monitoring and control of an anechoic boundary array RF environment simulator

An electromagnetic measurement system for testing a device in a test region, the system comprising:

• in an operational path extending between a port of a channel emulator and an antenna directed to the device:
• one of an amplifier/attenuator combination and a variable gain amplifier (VGA) in line with the operational path;
• a coupler in line with the operational path, the coupler configured to couple a portion of energy from the operational path to monitoring circuitry;
• monitoring circuitry configured to receive and measure power coupled to the monitoring circuitry by the coupler, the measured power being communicated to the controller as an indication of an output power C of the operational path;
• and
• a controller configured to:
• control the output power C of the operational path by setting one of the attenuator and the VGA to achieve an attenuation setting A;
• and
• set the channel emulator output to a value B, such that C is a function of A and B;
• compare C to a target power level C0;
• and
• adjust at least one of A and B iteratively to achieve the target power level C0 to within a specifiable tolerance.