Ray-tracing techniques are used to derive the impulse response at VHF of a meteor burst communications channel. An approach to analyze the effects of multipath arising from wind shear is also presented and is applied to a simplified model of trail distortion. Within the limitations of the models adopted, we have found that a single path with a spread of approximately 0.2 μs adequately describes the channel behavior within roughly half a second from trail formation, and that a multipath structure with several paths and a total multipath spread of approximately 2 μs is typically associated with the channel at later times, when the wind shear substantially affects the trail shape. These results are consistent with experimental findings according to which a meteor trail communications channel is capable of transmitting beyond-the-horizon bursts of television images of broadcast quality typically for a fraction of a second after trail formation.

The use of feedforward correction to reduce nonlinear distortion in a microwave amplifier is investigated, using the Volterra series approach. Expressions are derived for the suppression of main amplifier distortion, in terms of the circuit parameters of the system. It is shown that the gain and phase imbalance in the second interference loop mainly determine the distortion suppression in the feedforward amplifier. An expression is derived for the relationship between amplifier distortion suppression and the degree of gain and phase imbalance in the second interference loop. The effect of the phase imbalance in the second interference loop on the AM-to-AM and AM-to-PM conversion in a feedforward amplifier is discussed; it is shown that the presence of such phase imbalance may cause a substantial difference to exist between the improvement in cross-modulation and that in intermodulation. Further, the gain sensitivity of the feedforward amplifier as a function of gain and phase imbalance is obtained. As an illustrative example, the distortion suppression of a specific IMPATT amplifier with feedforward correction is considered.

Adaptive meteor scatter communication requires a data storage which can transmit or receive data at a continuously variable rate. Several systems, designed around head-per-track rotating memories and shift register arrays, are discussed.