Advantage of Base-Line Redundancy in Sparse Apertures

摘要

A general argument is presented to explain the dependence of observation-time T on sparseness f in observations with sparse apertures. For a system using a single observation, T approx. f(exp -3) while for a system using multiple observations, T approx. f(exp -2). When multiple observations are used, the optimum strategy is to maximize the redundancy of base-lines within each observation but to minimize the redundancy of base-lines between observations.