Fundamental Limits for Radio Signals with Large Bandwidth

Radio services have traditionally used narrow frequency bands individually assigned. More recently, the concept of sharing very wide frequency bands by several users has been advanced, and this opens the door for the use of much larger bandwidths than in the past. This paper investigates the limits imposed by nature on the bandwidth of line-of-sight radio services operating in the earth´s atmosphere. Furthermore, it investigates the limits for time resolution of radio signals, as well as the related limit of the angular resolution of a line array of sensors that receive signals with large bandwidth, and compares it with the classical resolution angle that holds for sinusoidal signals with vanishing bandwidth. Finally, an example is given where the concept of a practically finite bandwidth of a signal reaches its limit, and a more rigorous specification of the signal is required.