A Vibrating Intrinsic Reverberation Chamber (VIRC) has been installed in a semi-anechoic chamber that is normally used for electromagnetic interference test in the automotive industry and its performances evaluated. This hybrid strategy permits converting a traditional semi-anechoic chamber into a reverberating environment in a few hours. Furthermore, the proposed solution makes possible the use of two different types of testing environment without searching for additional space in the testing house. The work analyzes some figure of merits that are normally used for traditional reverberation chambers like the autocorrelation of the electromagnetic field and its statistical uniformity and isotropy properties. The analysis is performed in the frequency range from 100 MHz to 6 GHz in a 26 m x 8 m x 6 m cavity. The experimental datasets are finally tested through a goodness-offit test for checking their convergence to theoretical values.

The Vibrating Intrinsic Reverberation Chamber (VIRC) is a special resonant cavity with flexible conductive walls. It can be used to check the susceptibility of electronic equipment to external radiated electromagnetic fields. This work suggests a closed-loop calibration method to adjust the expected level of the field strength in the working volume of the cavity. The regulation of the field level is based on its average value and is particularly useful whenever the VIRC is used as temporary installation to transform a semi-anechoic chamber in a reverberation environment. In this case, a closed-loop calibration method appears to be more suitable as it permits fast regulation of the test field after new installation of the test environment.