A log-periodic spiral antenna array for L-band radio interferometric imaging

摘要

The perfect Y antenna array configuration is among the most prevalent antenna array arrangement used in radio interferometry for synthesis imaging. It is crucial to determine an antenna array configuration that could offer further higher quality radio-images. In this paper, a novel and an efficient L-band log-periodic spiral antenna array design is presented. The radio-imaging performance of the log-periodic spiral antenna array is compared and shown to outperform an equivalent perfect Y antenna array. Radio imaging performance is evaluated using the computational simulation for the proposed L-band log-periodic spiral antenna array and the equivalent perfect Y antenna array. The metric used for evaluation is the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and Surface Brightness Sensitivity (SBS). The L-band log-periodic spiral antenna arraywas observed to have about five times higher bandwidth, 2.24 times greater sensitivity, angular resolution better by a factor of five, and 10% wider field of view than the perfect Y configuration antenna array of comparable extent. It has been analytically demonstrated that the log-periodic spiral antenna array is an optimum configuration based on Chow's optimization technique. The L-band log-periodic spiral antenna array has outperformed the perfect Y configuration in many different imaging aspects.