Scattered and absorbed powers in receiving antennas

This paper discusses the amount of power, which is scattered and absorbed by a receiving antenna and in particular, whether an antenna can absorb the entire power incident upon it. The absorbed and scattered power from dipole arrays in either free space, or over ground plane is considered. By defining a suitable "aperture efficiency" for the receiving case, a dipole array without a ground plane can best absorb half of the incident power (scattering the rest), while an array over a ground plane can absorb all of the incident power. It is shown how aperture efficiency varies with load impedance, which is of practical interest for array designers.