Location

EMBRACE will be a network of aperture arrays including a ~160m² core located close to the existing Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope which consists of fourteen 25 m diameter paraboloids. In addition, a smaller demonstrator (~70m²) will be built in Nançay (France).

The core location will facilitate testing the stand-alone total power beams of EMBRACE in comparison to a standard 25m parabola and also to test the complex voltage beams when EMBRACE is incorporated in a well-calibrated short-baseline (~3km) interferometer. Operating EMBRACE in conjunction with the WSRT will enable a range of important astronomical tests to be performed.

Total area: 160m² (equivalent to a 14m dish)

Antennas

The entire demonstrator will be made up of small tiles of just over 1m x 1m. The EMBRACE demonstrator system will be on a scale several hundred times larger than The THousand Element Array (THEA), an array designed, built and successfully proven by ASTRON to demonstrate fundamental aspects of the aperture array concept.

Having no moving parts, the planar array is steered electronically to allow multiple independent Fields of View.

Number of antennas:

The EMBRACE core will contain 144 tiles, ~5% of an individual SKA station.