Polarimetric calibration results of an APERTIF phased array feed

Author

Van Cappellen, Wim A. ; Wijnholds, Stefan J.

Author_Institution

Netherlands Inst. for Radio Astron., Dwingeloo, Netherlands

fYear

2012

Firstpage

698

Lastpage

701

Abstract

The field-of-view of a reflector-based radio telescope can be significantly increased by using phased array feeds (PAFs). Such PAFs need to be polarimetrically calibrated to allow proper reconstruction of the polarization state of the radio waves received. In this paper, we present far field radiation patterns of the Aperture Tile-in-Focus (APERTIF) system on the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) obtained for polarimetric characterization of the instrument. We also demonstrate successful application of these calibration results by reconstructing the rotation measure towards BL Lac over a frequency range from 1190 to 1390 MHz.

Keywords

UHF antennas; antenna feeds; antenna phased arrays; antenna radiation patterns; astronomical polarimetry; calibration; radiotelescopes; radiowave propagation; APERTIF phased array feed; BL Lac; PAF; WSRT; Westerbork synthesis radiotelescope; aperture tile-in-focus system; far field radiation pattern; frequency 1190 MHz to 1390 MHz; polarimetric calibration result; radiowave polarization reconstruction; reflector-based radiotelescope; Antenna measurements; Arrays; Calibration; Extraterrestrial measurements; Feeds; Frequency measurement; Rotation measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), 2012 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Cape Town

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0333-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICEAA.2012.6328718

Filename

6328718