The Steady-State Antenna Patterns of Adaptive Arrays

The antenna pattern of a receiving adaptive array of arbitrary three-dimensional geometry operating in an environment of K sources, one desired signal and (K - 1) jammers, is considered. It is shown that the adapted (voltage) antenna pattern of the array is a linear combination of K (or less) basis patterns, each of which is a function of one source only. We find that these basis patterns have a simple physical meaning, namely, the kth basis pattern is the pattern realized by the array when the transmission of source k is considered a desired signal and all other sources are turned off. When the array elements are isotropic, these basis patterns are retrodirective (that is, the mainlobe of the kth basis pattern points at source k). It had been shown that this property is also exhibited by a different decomposition of the adapted pattern in the special case of a single jammer (K = 2). In contrast, our decomposition which is simpler than the earlier one, yields retrodirective beams for all K. The simple, physically meaningful, pattern decomposition developed here is quite significant in the insight it provides regarding the basic underlying principles of adaptive arrays. It is also instrumental in elucidating their capabilities and limitations.