Antennafier Arrays for Electronic Beam Control

Integration of antennas with circuits can provide sophisticated receiving performance, with fewer parts and an accompanying savings in size, weight, and cost more easily than conventional separate design. This is illustrated by the beam shaping capability of a four element array of controllable-gain transistorized dipole antennafiers using an equal-amplitude corporate feed structure. Effective amplitude taper was obtained by individual gain adjustments in the integrated elements. Patterns and noise temperatures are given for various amplitude distributions, including uniform, edge, binomial, and Dolph-Chebyshev. The antennafier element used was a gamma-matched half-wave dipole integrated with a 2Nl 742 VHF transistor amplifier. Adjustable base bias was used for gain control. Up to 12 db circuit gain was obtainable in each element with an effective noise temperature under 400°K at 148 Mc.