Modern radio telescopes strongly rely on accurate computational electromagnetic tools for "beam" models. Especially for densely-packed aperture array radio telescopes, the only feasible way to produce accurate models of the individual embedded element patterns is by using electromagnetic codes. In this paper, the accuracy of two models computed by different commercial codes is evaluated for one station of the SKA-Low radio telescope. Except for a couple of critical frequencies, the amplitude and phase errors are low enough to allow a beamformer efficiency higher than 99%.
@article{arxiv.2306.06724,
title = {Antenna Pattern Modelling Accuracy for a Very Large Aperture Array Radio Telescope with Strongly Coupled Elements},
author = {Pietro Bolli and David Davidson and Maria Grazia Labate and Stefan J. Wijnholds},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.06724},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Paper accepted by the IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters on May 23, 2023