DIRECT IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION IN MULTI-ELEMENT INTERFEROMETRY

Abstract

The Ukrainian VLBI system of decameter radio telescopes URAN successfully solves many scientific problems, but implementing aperture synthesis technology has a number of difficulties. One of them is significant phase distortions in this range caused by an inhomogeneous propagation environment. Therefore, the task arose to develop an alternative technology with the conventional name "Interferovision", which would allow us to restore radio images with a limited number of antennas, operate with broadband signals, not require flatness of the objects scene, and have an extended field of view. A method of direct image reconstruction when observing objects in space, using a multi-element interferometer, is proposed. This method is based on a physically based principle that is similar to holography. The wave front is registered by the antennas of the interferometer, and further processing is equivalent to its playback in reverse and registration of the resulting spatial interference image. There are no special requirements for the radiation of individual points of the source, except for its delta correlation. A finite frequency band is considered, and each point can be characterized by its own spectrum, that is, its own autocorrelation function of radiation. The resolution of the direct reconstruction method depends on its width. With the quasi-monochromatic approximation, the autocorrelation functions of the radiation of all the source points degenerate into sinusoids, and the restoration of the image becomes possible only with the use of the Fourier transformation. A theoretical justification of the method for spaces of different dimensions has been obtained. Interferometric systems of the same rank with many antennas are reduced to a same canonical form with fixed number of virtual antennas placed at the origin of the coordinates and at unit distances on the coordinate axes. The ambiguity of the obtained solution is eliminated by using an additional antenna. A simulation of the proposed method of direct image reconstruction for two-dimensional space was carried out. Despite the low conditionality of the system for estimating the distance, when it increases, the angular characteristics are preserved. Therefore, the method is promising for restoring radio images of space radio sources.