Since the processing is so rapid the local module motion would be insignificant during this interval and would have the same relative position with respect to the reference module upon retransmission. Consequently the path delay with respect to the reference plane will be the same as that experienced by the received signal. Since the conjugation process provides an initial phase delay equal and opposite in sign to that on receive, the retransmitted signal will arrive at the reference plane in phase with that signal retransmitted by the reference module. Therefore all modules will operate in concert regenerating a constant phase contour which duplicates the phase contour of the incoming reference signal. Therefore, an incident plane wave will be re-radiated as a plane wave and in the direction from whence it came. Furthermore an incident spherical wave will be retransmitted as a spherical wave with reversed curvature so that the transmitted beam is steered onto and focused upon the ground receiver. Ideally, the system would operate as described providing the self-focusing, self-pointing features previously described. In reality, there are complications which, if not accounted for and controlled, could cause significant degradation of system efficiency. For example, in a real system, the spaceborne transmitter could have sufficient motion as to cause measurable doppler shift of the uplinked reference frequency. This would be most significant when the transmitter is being slewed through a limit cycle with respect to the ground receiver or when the transmitter structure responds to an attitude change. In these cases the orbiting reference module will not see the same doppler shift as the other modules and all transmissions would be
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