Impulse Responses of Linear UWB Antenna Arrays and the Application to Beam Steering

Abstract

Ultra wideband (UWB) systems enable the transmission of short pulses with a very high time resolution. The application of UWB arrays leads to small beam widths without sidelobes even for sparse arrays with large element spacing. However the transmitted and received signals are subject to distortions due to the dispersive properties like ringing and filtering of the antennas. These effects are analyzed for true time delay beam steering in the paper by the means of the antenna array impulse response. This is derived for the example of a linear array for the frequency range of 3.1-10.6 GHz. The theoretical results are verified by measurements.