Antenna Array Time-Delay Loss Quantification for High Symbol Rate Satellite Communications

A framework is proposed for quantifying signal degradation due to inter-symbol interference induced from the time-delay dispersion (also called group delay dispersion or pulse dispersion) of a non-timed array (e.g. phased array, reflectarray). A ray tracing technique is used to compute the element-by-element time delay and then summed and normalized in a corporate fashion to get an aggregate delayed response. This response is then quantified in a signal-level analysis in MATLAB to determine an upper bound on array size vs symbol rate.