Conclusion: The dependence of the frequency noise on the
’ A powerful method involves numeri-
output power, the tuning current and the current modulation
have been measured in a two electrode DBR laser from
30MHz to 8GHz. The frequency noise decreased with
increased output power at a rate faster than 1/P. Further-
more, at certain biasing levels, noise increased and the relax-
ation oscillation was shifted to lower frequencies when current
was injected into the passive waveguide. The frequency noise
remained practically unaffected when the laser was subjected
to current modulation but a large number of harmonics could
be observed.
Acknowledgment: The authors would like to thank Mr.
Susumu Machida of NTT Basic Research Laboratories for his
valuable help during his visit to the Royal Institute of Tech-
nology.
E. GOOBAR 5th December 1990
R. SCHATZ
Department of Microwave Engineering
Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm S-100 44, Sweden
References
1 KOTAKI, Y., and IsHiKAwA, H.: ‘Spectral characteristics of a three-
section wavelength-tunable DBR laser’, IEEE J. Quantum Elec-
tron., 1989, QE-25, (6),pp. 134g1345
2 OBERG, M., NILSSON, S., OIALA, P., HOLMBERG, B., ANDRB, J., KLINGA,
T., and BROBERG, 8.: ‘Performance of tunable DBR-lasers with dif-
ferent waveguide joints’. Proc. 12th IEEE Int. Semiconductor
Laser Conf., Davos, September 1990, paper L-16
3 KOCH, T., and KOREN, U,: ‘Semiconductor lasers for coherent
optical fiber communications’, J. Lightwaue Technol., 1990, LT-8,
pp. 274-293
4 AMANN, M.-c.: ‘Excess linewidth broadening in wavelength-tunable
laser diodes’, Electron. Lett., 1990, 26, pp. 278-279
5 PAN, x., OLESEN, H., and TROMBORG, B.: ‘Linewidth and FM noise
spectrum of DFB lasers including spatial holeburning and nonlin-
ear gain’. Proc. 12th IEEE Int. Semiconductor Laser Conf., Davos,
September 1990, paper H-6
6 YAMAMOTO, Y., SAITO, s., and ”1, T.: ’AM and FM quantum
noise in semiconductor lasers-part 11: comparison of theoretical
and experimental results for AlGaAs lasers’, IEEE J . Quantum
Electron., 1983, QE-19, (l), pp. 5 M 7
7 GOOBAR, E., GILLNER, L., SCHATZ, R., BROBERG, B., NIISSON, S., and
TANBUN-EK, T.: ‘Measurement of a VPE-transported DFB laser
with blue-shifted frequency modulation response from DC to
2GHz’, Electron. Lett., 1988,24, pp. 746-747
8 MACHIDA, s., and YAMAMOTO, Y.: ‘Observation of the amplitude
squeezing from semiconductor lasers by balanced direct detectors
with delay line’, Optics Lett., 1989, 14, (19), pp. 104-1047
9 WORK, e., and NILSSON, 0.:‘A tool to calculate the linewidth of
complicated semiconductor lasers’, IEEE J. Quantum Electron.,
1987,QE-23,(8),pp. 1303-1313
IO LING, M.-s.,WANG, s.-Y., and DUTTA, N.: ‘Measurements and model-
ing of harmonic distortion in InGaAsP distributed feedback
lasers’, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., 1990, QE26, (6),pp. 998-1004
NULL SYNTHESIS FOR SHAPED
REFLECTOR ANTENNAS
Indexing terms ’ Antennas, Reflector antennas, Satellite
systems
Some preliminary results are presented, demonstrating the
feasibility of synthesising reflector profiles to produce deep
nulls in the radiation pattern at prescribed angles while
maintaining high gain levels at other prescribed angles. The
synthesis technique can be applied to both shaped rigid and
reconfigurable mesh reflector antennas. Experimental results
for an 85cm mesh reflector antenna at IOGHz are included
to provide validation of the technique.
Introduction Techniques for the synthesis of reflector profiles
to produce high-gain shaped radiation patterns, for example
to cover a particular region of the earth’s surface from a satel-
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 31st January 1991 Vol 27
__
7-
lite, are well established.
cal optimisation of the reflector profile as described by a
polynomial/Fourier series or cubic spline representation, to
minimise an objective function containing the differences
between specified and computed gain at points in the sampled
far-field pattern, with the computed gains derived from the
physical optics integral. A similar technique may be applied to
reconfigurable mesh reflector antennas, with the control point
positions used as control variables for the o p t i m i s a t i ~ n . ~ , ~
The ability to form controllable nulls in the radiation pattern
is of potential value in allowing suppression of interfering
signals, for example from jamming, unintentional interference
from adjacent communications or radar systems, or multipath
interference. This Letter describes a modification to the profile
synthesis technique, using numerical optimisation, to allow
one or more nulls to be introduced into the antenna radiation
pattern, while maintaining the specified shaped high-gain
region of the pattern. The technique has been validated
experimentally by measurements made on a prototype recon-
figurable mesh reflector antenna operating at lOGHz, and a
comparison of measured and predicted patterns for a typical
case is presented here.
Method: The objective function for the optimisation for a
simple shaped high-gain pattern is defined as
. Y
where N is the number of sample points in the far field, and
GCi- Gdi
for G,, < Gdi (2)
Fi = [4_]
and
F, = 0 for GCi2 Gdi (3)
where G,, and G,, are the computed and desired linear power
gains respectively, and A, is a weighting factor. For the
angular points in the far field at which a null is specified, the
objective function term F, is modified to
and
Fi = 0 for GCi5 Gdi ( 5 )
For a pattern point at which a null is to be formed, the gain
level may be required (as an example) to drop from 30 dBi +
to - 20 dBi; a dynamic range of 50 dB. Thus as the null forms
and the gain level at that angle reduces across this range, the
objective function term F i for the null point will change by
many orders of magnitude. This is in contrast to the terms for
the coverage points which will change over the course of the
optimisation by a far lesser amount, as the starting point
generally used for the optimisation is a defocused elliptical
beam of roughly the same angular dimensions as the coverage
pattern, such that at the outset the gains a t the coverage
points are only a few dB below the target gain. This will result
in the optimisation being unable to effectively form both the
coverage pattern and the null(s) simultaneously unless the
weighting for the null points is adjusted manually during the
optimisation. T o overcome this dilliculty the form of the
objective function is modified by simply expressing GCiand Gdi
in dBi rather than as linear power gains. By appropriate selec-
tion of the weighting coeffcients Ai, both the coverage pattern
and the nulls may be synthesised effectively and simulta-
neously.
Theoretical results: The technique has been successfully
applied to a number of different problems, however the results
achievable are illustrated here by means of one example. The
antenna is a reconfigurable mesh reflector type, with a 502
diameter aperture and 78 mesh control points on a regular
No 3 291
-
square grid with 5 1 spacing. The reflector is illuminated with
a feed pattern with a -12dB edge taper. The high-gain
pattern synthesised corresponds to coverage of the North
American continent viewed from a position 307" East on the
geostationary arc, and is sampled at 13 points on a regular 1"
grid. Two nulls were specified, both located at approximately
2" outside the coverage pattern. The results are shown in
contour form in Fig. 1, and as pattern cuts through the null
locations in Fig. 2, with pattern cuts also shown in Fig. 2 for
synthesis of the coverage pattern without the nulls. Compared
with the coverage-only synthesis the pattern levels at the
specified null angles have been reduced from 15 dBi and
+22dBi to around -2OdBi, with only slight gain reduction
(averaging at 0.13dB) within the coverage pattern. Very
similar results have been obtained when the same synthesis
was carried out for a rigid reflector of the same aperture size.
As will be shown in the following section, it is also possible to
synthesise nulls which lie within the high-gain coverage region
of the pattern.
Experimental results: A prototype reconfigurable mesh reflec-
tor antenna has been built at QMW, which allows the surface
to be reconfigured under computer The aperture
diameter is 850mm, and the gold-plated molybdenum mesh
surface has 52 control points spaced on a regular lOOmm grid,
and is illuminated by a corrugated feed providing a - 12dB
+ edge taper at a frequency of 10GHz. One case for which
pattern synthesis has been carried out corresponds to the
same shaped coverage pattern as described in the preceding
Section, scaled to take account of the reduced electrical aper-
ture, and with a null specified in the centre of the coverage
pattern. Radiation patterns have been measured on a compact
antenna test range at QMW when the mesh was configured to
the settings resulting from this pattern synthesis. Measured
and predicted patterns in the principal azimuth and elevation
planes are shown in Fig. 3. Agreement between the measure-
ments and predictions is seen to be generally excellent, with
any differences at the level attributable to measurement errors
associated with the test range.
1 I I I l I 1 1 1
0

-10-

-20-

-30-
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 I 2 3 4 5 m
azimuth .degrees D
-40-

Fig. 1 Predicted contour plot for synthesised coverage pattern with 2

nulls outside coverage area
-50 1
0 coverage sample points -60 I
+ null points
-25
I
-20 -15
I I
-10
'
-5
l
0 5
l l
IO
l
15
l
20
.
25
8 , degrees
a

8 . degrees
a -501
-601 I l I l I I
t1
-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25
8, degrees
b
Fig. 3 Comparison of predicted and measured principal plane pattern
cuts for coverage pattern with central null
__ predicted
_ ~ measured
~ _
a predicted
b measured

-1 0 - I Acknowledgments: The work described in this Letter was

sponsored by GEC-Marconi Research and The Fellowship of
-20 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Engineering, and their support is gratefully acknowledged.
-7-6-5-4-3-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 , degrees A. D. MONK 5th December 1990
b 172312 P. J. B. CLARRICOATS
Fig. 2 Predicted pattern cuts through pattern nulls ZHOU HA1
~ coverage + nulls Department of Electronic Engineering
_ _ _ _ coverage pattem only Queen Mary & Westfield College
a Cuts through 1st null (-4.0", 0.0") Mile End Road
b Cuts through 2nd null (3.0". - 1.0') London El I N S , United Kingdom

292 ELECTRONICS LETTERS 31st January 1991 Vol. 27 No. 3

 References
1 BERGMANN, 1. R., BROWN, R. C., CLARRICOATS, P. 1. B., and ZHOU, H.:
'Synthesis of shaped-beam reflector antenna patterns', IEE Proc.
H , 1988,135, pp. 48-53
2 CLARRICOAIS, P. 1. B., HAI, Z., BROWN, R. C., POULTON, 0. T., and
CRONE, G. E.: 'A reconfigurahle mesh reflector antenna'. Proc. of
the 6th international conference on antennas and propagation,
Warwick, 1989, pp. 112-116
3 BROWN, R. c., CLARRICOAIS, P. 1. B., and HAI,z.: 'The performance
of a prototype reconfigurahle mesh reflector for spacecraft antenna
applications'. Proc. of the 19th European microwave conference,
London, 1989, pp. 876878
in the description of the operation of the investigated ARQ
schemes.
It should be obvious that, given the round-trip delay N and
the block error probability P,, the optimal maximal allowed
number of copies in each transmission depends on the number
of unacknowledged receivers. In other words, to maximise the
throughput efficiency, the maximal allowed number of copies
should be adaptively adjusted according to the number of
unacknowledged receivers. However, such adaptive protocols
could be too complicated and thus may not be favoured from
an implementational point of view. Therefore, the MARQ
schemes proposed in this Letter are worth studying.

Throughput performance: Let K denote the number of recei-

vers in the system. For simplicity, we assume that transmis-
sion errors between copies of data blocks occur independently
at each receiver and the feedback channel is error-free.
Consider a particular value of m. Let q , denote the
IMPROVING PERFORMANCE OF throughput efficiency. Clearly, q(m) = l/L,(K), where L,(K)
MULTIDESTINATION ARQ SCHEMES represents the average number of transmissions required to
UNDER HIGH ERROR RATE CONDITIONS successfully deliver a data block. T o compute the value of
L,(K), we have to consider three cases separately.

Indexinq terms: Data transmission, Information theory (i) Case I: m = CO.

The scheme when m = 00 is actually the Moeneclaey and
The throughput eficiencies of a class of continuous multi-
destination ARQ schemes are evaluated. The operation of Bruneel scheme and has been examined in Reference 4. The
the proposed schemes is simpler than that of the schemes result is
studied previously. Numerical results also show that the
optimal proposed scheme offers a better throughput per- L,(K) = S(P,, K) +N -1 (1)
formance than the optimal one investigated previously.
where

Introduction: Because of the increasing demands of point-to-

multipoint communication over a broadcast links such as file
distribution or teleconferencing links, various multidestination
automatic repeat request (MARQ) schemes have been recently represents the average number of copies transmitted until
proposed and evaluated.14 For example, the performance of each of the K receivers receives at least one copy successfully.
the Moeneclaey and Bruneel,' the Sastry6 and Morris'
schemes for multidestination environments were examined in (ii) Case 2: 1 I m I N .
Reference 4. It was found that the Morris scheme offers the For this case, all the m copies are transmitted before the
best throughput performance of the three whereas the Moene- transmitter can receive any response. Therefore, L,(K) can be
claey and Bruneel scheme is the simplest to implement and computed recursively by
provides almost the same throughput performance as the
Morris scheme under very high error rate conditions. In Ref-
erence 8, a class of MARQ schemes which can achieve a better
performance under high error rate conditions were proposed. ;=o \ ' I
The class of MARQ schemes investigated in Reference 8, x (P:)'-'[N - 1 + Lm(K- i)] (3)
however, have to distinguish whether a data block is transmit-
ted for the first time or is being retransmitted, resulting in a with
complicated operation. I propose another class of MARQ
schemes with repeated transmissions which can improve the m + P:(N - 1)
throughput performance and simplify the operation as well. Lm(l)=
1 - P:

Investigated ARQ schemes: In the continuous ARQ schemes Notice that, to compute Lm(K),the values of Lm(l),Lm(2),...,
investigated here, each data block is transmitted with m or and Lm(K- 1) have to be determined first.
fewer copies contiguously to the receivers. At each receiver, an
error detection procedure is performed on each received copy. (iii) Case 3: N < m < 00.
A positive (ACK) or a negative acknowledgment (NAK) is When m > N , the transmitter may receive an ACK from
sent back to the transmitter according to whether the copy is each receiver before all the m copies are transmitted. Let Q j K )
received successfully or erroneously. A data block is con- denote the probability that all the K receivers receive suc-
sidered to be successfully delivered as long as each receiver cessfully the data block in j copies, i.e.
receives successfully at least one of the transmitted copies. If at
least one receiver detects all the m copies with error, then, just Q,(K) = ( 1 - Pi)" (4)
as in the go-back-N ARQ scheme, the transmitter goes back
to and retransmits that data block against with at most m Furthermore, let R j K ) denote the probability that the K
copies. This process is repeated until the data block is suc- receive the data block successfully exactly at the j t h copy, i.e.
cessfully delivered.
For convenience, the time to transmit a copy of a data = Q,tK) - Q j - i(K) (5)
block is called a slot. Consider the transmission of a particular
data block. We assume for simplicity that the round-trip delay Then L J K ) can be evaluated recursively by
between the transmitter and any receiver is equal to N slots.
As a result, if m I N , all the m copies of a data block have to m-N m
be transmitted before any response can arrive at the transmit- LJK) =
j= 1
1 R j K K + N - 1)+ m j=m-N+I
RjK)
ter. If m > N, then the transmitter may receive an ACK for
the data block from each receiver before all the m copies are
transmitted. When this occurs, the transmitter will start trans-
mitting the next data block rather than continuing transmit-
ting the rest copies. Therefore, the phrase 'or fewer' was used x (P:)"-'[m +N - 1 + Lm(K- i)] (6)
ELECTRONICS L E T E R S 31sr January 1991 Vol. 27 No. 3 293

. .-T. .-~~ ~ _ _ _ _ ~