Electrically small supergain end-fire arrays

Abstract

The theory, computer simulations, and experimental measurements are presented for electrically small, two-element supergain arrays with near-optimal end-fire gains of 7 dB. We show how the difficulties of narrow tolerances, large mismatches, low radiation efficiencies, and reduced scattering of electrically small parasitic elements are overcome by using electrically small resonant antennas as the elements in both separately driven and singly driven (parasitic), two-element, electrically small supergain end-fire arrays. Although rapidly increasing narrow tolerances prevent the practical realization of the maximum theoretically possible end-fire gain of electrically small arrays with many elements, the theory and preliminary numerical simulations indicate that near-maximum supergains are also achievable in practice for electrically small arrays with three (and possibly more) resonant elements if the decreasing bandwidth with increasing number of elements can be tolerated. Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union.