Noise Temperature of Phased Array Radio Telescope: The Murchison Widefield Array and the Engineering Development Array

Abstract

This paper presents a framework to compute the receiver noise temperature (Trcv) of two low-frequency radio telescopes, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and the Engineering Development Array (EDA). The MWA was selected because it is the only operational low-frequency Square Kilometre Array (SKA) precursor at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, while the EDA was selected because it mimics the proposed SKA-Low station size and configuration. It will demonstrated that the use of an existing power wave based framework for noise characterization of multiport amplifiers is sufficiently general to evaluate Trcv of phased arrays. The calculation of Trcv was done using a combination of measured noise parameters of the low-noise amplifier (LNA) and simulated S-parameters of the arrays. The calculated values were compared to measured results obtained via astronomical observation and both results are found to be in agreement. Such verification is lacking in current literature. It was shown that the receiver noise temperatures of both arrays are lower when compared to a single isolated element. This is caused by the increase in mutual coupling within the array which is discussed in depth in this paper.

arXiv commentIEEE Trans. Antennas. Propagat., accepted, 6 Mar. 2020. 10 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (9)

• The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies
• The Phase II Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview
• Characterization of a Low-Frequency Radio Astronomy Prototype Array in Western Australia
• Field Deployment of Prototype Antenna Tiles for the Mileura Widefield Array--Low Frequency Demonstrator
• Measuring Noise Temperatures of Phased-Array Antennas for Astronomy at CSIRO
• The Engineering Development Array: A low frequency radio telescope utilising SKA precursor technology
• Cold-Source Noise Measurement of a Differential Input Single-Ended Output Low-Noise Amplifier Connected to a Low-Frequency Radio Astronomy Antenna
• Measured Aperture-Array Noise Temperature of the Mark II Phased Array Feed for ASKAP
• The statistics of radio frequency interference propagating from long distances to the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory

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• Array Element Coupling in Radio Interferometry I: A Semi-Analytic Approach
• The All-Sky SignAl Short-Spacing INterferometer (ASSASSIN) I: Global sky measurements with the Engineering Development Array-2
• What is the SKA-Low Sensitivity for Your Favourite Radio Source ?
• Sensitivity of a Low-Frequency Polarimetric Radio Interferometer
• Robust absolute solar flux density calibration for the Murchison Widefield Array
• System equivalent flux density of a low-frequency polarimetric phased array interferometer
• Field-level Reconstruction from Foreground-Contaminated 21-cm Maps
• System Equivalent Flux Density of a Polarimetric Tripole Radio Interferometer
• General Framework for Array Noise Analysis and Noise Performance of a Two-Element Interferometer With a Mutual-Coupling Canceler