{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023509655751469353, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005877413937867338, 'mean_word_length': 5.273684210526316, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Near-Field Experimental Verification of the EM Models for the LOFAR Radio Telescope

Modern radio astronomical facilities in the Very High-Frequency band (VHF, 30-300 MHz) consist of large antenna arrays with digital beamforming. The calibration of these instruments requires accurate models of their electromagnetic behavior. Numerical models covering the full telescope field-of-view are nowadays effectively computed by means of full-wave solvers. However, their experimental verification is still an open and challenging task. This letter proposes a verification strategy based on near-field scans. An unmanned aerial vehicle carrying a test source is used to excite the array from a limited set of spatial points, located in the radiating near-field region. The collected data are directly used to verify the telescope electromagnetic model without additional postprocessing. This exploits the capability of full-wave solvers to predict near-field patterns from the same geometrical and electrical model used to compute far-field patterns. The application of the proposed technique to the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope verified the predictions with residuals below 0.5 dB.