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25 February 2022 Impact of mutual coupling between SKALA4.1 antennas to the spectral smoothness response
Pietro Bolli, Mirko Bercigli, Paola Di Ninni, Lorenzo Mezzadrelli, Giuseppe Virone
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Abstract

One of the advantages of arrays with aperiodic distributed elements is their ability to mitigate the detrimental mutual coupling effects on the radiation pattern. However, we show that the mutual coupling inside a random array can still generate undesired structures in the frequency response although the single antenna features a spectral smooth response. For small subsets (a couple of SKALA4.1 antennas and a 16-element array) of a low-frequency instrument station of the Square Kilometre Array, the combination of large mutual coupling and antenna geometry creates systematic distortions in the element frequency responses. This phenomenon compromises the station spectral smoothness response versus frequency. However, we demonstrate that it is possible to partially mitigate these frequency structures by reconfiguring the antenna distribution based on exclusion zones.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Pietro Bolli, Mirko Bercigli, Paola Di Ninni, Lorenzo Mezzadrelli, and Giuseppe Virone "Impact of mutual coupling between SKALA4.1 antennas to the spectral smoothness response," Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems 8(1), 011023 (25 February 2022). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JATIS.8.1.011023
Received: 24 September 2021; Accepted: 8 February 2022; Published: 25 February 2022
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CITATIONS
Cited by 12 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Antennas

Polarization

Radiation effects

Calibration

Prototyping

Scattering

Receivers

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