Virtual center arraying

Methods to increase the amount of data that can be received from outer planet missions are described with emphasis on antenna arraying systems designed to increase the total effective aperture of the receiving system. One such method is virtual center arraying (VCA). In VCA, a combined carrier reference is derived at a point that is, conceptually, the geometric center of the array. This point need not coincide with any of the actual antennas of the array. A noise analysis of the VCA system is given along with formulas for the phase jitter as a function of loop bandwidths and the amount of loop damping. If the ratio of the loop bandwidths of the center loop to the vertex loops is greater than 100, then the jitter is very nearly equal to that expected for ideal combined carrier referencing.