Limitations of Series-Fed Arrays in Broadband Communications

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the signal distortion which results when long, series-fed arrays are used for communication. It is shown that under certain conditions the antenna array can be considered a linear filter, the response of which is a function of frequency as well as spatial coordinates. The distortion accompanying the transmission as measured by the least mean-square difference between the transmitted and the received signals is derived. This expression is evaluated for the case of a uniformly excited array and a rectangular band-pass signal spectrum. In the absence of noise the transmitted signal can be completely recovered in the receiver by employing the proper linear filter. In the presence of noise the signal cannot, of course, be completely recovered. However, a technique for minimizing the distortion, in this case using a pre-filter and a post-filter, is investigated.