A Multiple Unit Steerable Antenna for Short-Wave Reception

This paper discusses a receiving system employing sharp vertical-plane directivity, capable of being steered to meet the varying angles at which short radio waves arrive at a receiving location. The system is the culmination of some four years effort to determine the degree to which receiving antenna directivity may be carried to increase the reliability of short-wave transatlantic telephone circuits. The system consists of an end-on array of antennas, of fixed directivity, whose outputs are combined in phase for the desired angle. The antenna outputs are conducted over coaxial transmission lines to the receiving building where the phasing is accomplished by means of rotatable phase shifters operating at intermediate frequency. These phase shifters, one for each antenna, are geared together, and the favored direction in the vertical plane may be steered by rotating the assembly. Several sets of these phase shifters are paralleled, each set constituting a separately steerable branch. One of these branches serves as an exploring or monitoring circuit for determining the angles at which waves are arriving. The remaining branches may then be set to receive at these angles. The several receiving branches have common automatic gain control and thus provide a diversity on an angle basis. To obtain the full benefit of the angular resolution afforded by the sharp directivity, the different transmission times, corresponding to the different angles, are equalized by audio delay networks, before combining in the final output.