Simulations of astronomical imaging phased arrays.
We describe a theoretical procedure for analyzing astronomical phased arrays with overlapping beams and apply the procedure to simulate a simple example. We demonstrate the effect of overlapping beams on the number of degrees of freedom of the array and on the ability of the array to recover a source. We show that the best images are obtained using overlapping beams, contrary to common practice, and show how the dynamic range of a phased array directly affects the image quality.
Saklatvala
George
G
Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. g.saklatvala@mrao.cam.ac.uk
Withington
Stafford
S
Hobson
Michael P
MP