XARRAY

Welcome to the Xarray Tool website

Xarray is a tool developed in MATLAB to primarily compute the far-field radiation patterns of planar antenna arrays using irregular 2D-FFTs. It has been developed for analysing large antenna configurations for the SKA aperture array systems and includes various regular and irregular configurations. It can also import any user defined x-y configuration and any antenna pattern data. The tool generally outputs beam data as a FITS image. Furthermore, parameters such as effective aperture and system temperature can be saved for different test scenarios. The tool incorporates a spectral model of the sky and accesses temperature maps like the Haslam 408 MHz survery to compute array temperature and therefore give a more accurate measure of the system temperature. The array scanning angles can be entered in Spherical coordinates (theta, phi) or in Equatorial coordinates (RA, DEC). In scanning mode, parameters can be computed either for a range of frequencies or for tracking a source in time.

This tool has been developed by Nima Razavi-Ghods, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Currently a Windows executable (NEW version 1.6 beta) can be downloaded here. Future versions will be released for both Windows and Unix configurations. For more details email me.

Many thanks to the following colleagues who contributed to this tool:

Christophe Craeye (Université catholique de Louvain)

David González-Ovejero (Université catholique de Louvain)

Ahmed El-Makadema (University of Manchester)

Stef Salvini (University of Oxford)

Eloy de Lera Acedo (University of Cambridge)