The purpose of this report is to document the noise performance of a complex
beamforming array antenna system and to characterize the recently developed
noise measurement facility called THACO, which was developed at ASTRON. The
receiver system includes the array antenna of strongly coupled 144 TSA
elements, 144 Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) (Tmin =35-40K) and the data
recording/storing facilities of the initial test station that allow for
off-line digital beamforming. The primary goal of this study is to compare the
measured receiver noise temperatures with the simulated values for several
practical beamformers, and to predict the associated receiver noise coupling
contribution, antenna thermal noise and ground noise pick-up (due to the back
radiation).Comment: ASTRON repor