Antenna Pattern Modeling Accuracy for a Very Large Aperture Array Radio Telescope With Strongly Coupled Elements

Modern radio telescopes strongly rely on accurate computational electromagnetic tools for “beam” models. Especially for densely packed aperture array radio telescopes, the only feasible way to produce accurate models of the individual embedded element patterns is by using electromagnetic codes. In this letter, the accuracy of two models computed by different commercial codes is evaluated for one station of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)-Low radio telescope. Except for a couple of critical frequencies, the amplitude and phase errors are low enough to allow a beamformer efficiency higher than 99%.