FEKO/GRASP Simulations of Super-Resolution with a Reflective Metal-Mesh Toraldo Pupil on the 32m Medicina Radio Telescope

We are currently carrying out a project devoted to the implementation of super-resolution on single-dish radio telescopes, aimed to obtain an angular resolution better than the classical diffraction limit. A feasible method to achieve this goal consists of using variable transmittance pupils, and specifically the simplest version of these pupils which consists of a binary phase shift mask, also known as Toraldo pupil (TP). An attractive method to design and fabricate TPs is to use the metal mesh-filter technology, which allows to fabricate both transmissive and reflective TPs. In this work we show, through EM numerical simulations, that super-resolution can indeed be achieved on a Cassegrain radio telescope using a previously designed and tested reflective mesh-filter TP.