Engineering Commons^™

Active Impedance Matching And Sensitivity Optimized Phased Array Feed Design For Radio Astronomy, David E. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

One of the many challenges in radio astronomy is the ability to make accurate measurements quickly. In recent years engineers and astronomers have begun implementing phased array feeds (PAFs) as a way to negate the long observation times required by single antenna feeds. Unfortunately, large mutual coupling and other loss terms result in low sensitivity, restricting PAF usefulness in on dish observation. This thesis addresses several ways to reduce mutual coupling and maximize sensitivity for PAFs in radio astronomy. Antenna design of this magnitude requires accurate modeling capabilities. To this end, electromagnetic software models and low loss component designs are …