Receiving System Design for the Arraying of Independently Steerable Antennas

This paper considers the problem of arraying independently steerable antennas for use in deep-space communications systems. It describes the basic design of a receiver capable of utilizing all the signal power received on a number of antennas without requiring that the signals be phase coherent. The results of this study indicate that, for very large aperture systems, the array approach offers both economical and technical advantages over the single-reflector approach.