Karl F. Warnick, Marianna Ivashina, Stefan Wijnholds and Rob Maaskant, "Beamforming, Calibration and Figures of Merit for Polarimetric Phased Array Antennas", IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting, Spokane (USA), 3-8 July 2011 abstract: Several major efforts are underway worldwide to
replace traditional single pixel radio astronomy instruments with
wide-field, multipixel phased array feeds and aperture arrays. For
phased array antennas, one critical open area of research is the
calibration and beamforming algorithms required for the multi-pixel
signal processing and image formation. Since science applications of
these instruments rely heavily on the polarization properties of
astronomical sources, calibration and beamforming algorithms for
phased array antennas must include methods for producing stable,
well-characterized beams with high polarimetric accuracy. |