A W-band polarimeter for radio astronomy applications: Design and simulation

This contribution presents a W-band polarimeter designed for radio astronomy applications. The proposed scheme relays in a sub-harmonic mixer that minimizes the W-band hardware thus making the hardware design easier. The receiver functionality is analyzed theoretically and the design of the feed-horn, polarizer and orthomode transducer is shown in detail, comparing the simulated results with measurements where possible. Finally, the whole polarimeter is simulated in an ideal way and then introducing realistic data files in order to check the receiver functionality and the expected performance.