The antenna spacetime system theory of wireless communications

Abstract

A general deterministic spacetime system theory of antennas suitable for the analysis and design of wireless communication links is rigorously developed using the recently introduced antenna current Green's function formalism. We provide the first complete derivation of the antenna spatio-temporal response to a delta source using only electromagnetic Green's functions, effectively eliminating all field and current distributions in the final expressions. While the theory works well in both space and time, it puts into sharper focus how the spatio-temporal structure of electromagnetic processes imposes restrictions on the signal processing capabilities of antenna systems by constraining the allowable mathematical form of the effective impulse response of the global wireless communication link. It is shown that the antenna current Green's functions of both the receive and transmit terminals, plus the propagation environment Green's functions, are the only quantities needed to obtain the single input–single output link response function in closed form. One of the results deduced from the theory is that an exact impulse response cannot be ascribed to an arbitrary antenna in general, but may be approximated for many applications. The theory can be deployed for future antenna systems research to boost up spectral efficiency (without increasing physical bandwidth) by directly incorporating electromagnetic knowledge into the design of the communication system's signal processing functions.