What is the function of a Beverage antenna’s termination resistor?

A Beverage antenna relies on a termination resistor to make it a unidirectional receiving antenna. Without this resistor, a Beverage wire acts bidirectionally, receiving signals from both the direction it points and the reverse direction. Signals arriving from the desired forward direction travel down the wire toward the feed point and the receiver. However, signals arriving from the reverse direction travel down the wire toward the far end. The termination resistor is placed at this far end to absorb the reverse-traveling signals. By dissipating this energy as heat instead of allowing it to reflect back to the feed point, the resistor effectively nullifies reception from the rear, giving the antenna its directional characteristic.