Reply to “Comments on `Superdirective-Type Near Fields in the Method of Auxiliary Sources'”

Summary form only given, as follows. We would like to thank Dr. Skobelev for bringing to the authors' attention the paper by N.P. Malakshinov and V.G. Yerikhov: "On one numerical method for solving diffraction problems" in Antennas, no. 25, pp. 53-65, 1977 (in Russian), which, to the best of their knowledge, has not been translated into English. Having now located and read the interesting paper by N.P. Malakshinov and V.G. Yerikhov the authors' of the above-named article (ibid., vol. 60, no. 6, pp. 3056-3060, June 2012) agree with Dr. Skobolev that the IEEE article discusses relations between the Method of Auxiliary Sources (MAS) and superdirectivity in more detail than in the Russian article. In the IEEE article the authors "go beyond the rather obvious similarity that both MAS and superdirective arrays exhibit oscillating currents." Rather, they focus on developing asymptotic formulas for the near field that allow one to distinguish the superdirective-type behaviors in MAS from effects due to roundoff. They cannot agree with Dr. Skobelev's comment "... creates the impression that its authors were the first and only ones who detected the indicated analogy"; in fact, in the Acknowledgment of the Russian article Malakshinov and Yerikhov "thank Professor Ramakrishna Janaswamy for first suggesting the relationship between MAS and superdirectivity.".