Numerical study of a dual-polarized Focal Plane Array (FPA) with Vivaldi elements placed in the vicinity of a large feed box using the parallelized FDTD code GEMS

This paper presents some results of a numerical modeling study of a focal plane array (FPA) comprising of 144 Vivaldi antenna elements, and complements the results which were earlier reported in. In the present study, we consider two EM-problems of different complexity, namely, (i) the free-standing FPA with a finite ground plane that was modeled to evaluate the accuracy of the simulated patterns by comparing these to the measurements in the anechoic chamber, and (ii) the array when placed in the window of a large PEC box representing the feed-carrying structure of the 25-m WSRT reflector system.