Impact of mutual coupling between SKALA4.1 antennas to the spectral smoothness response

One of the advantages of arrays with aperiodic distributed elements is their ability to mitigate the detrimental mutual coupling effects on the radiation pattern. However, we show that the mutual coupling inside a random array can still generate undesired structures in the frequency response although the single antenna features a spectral smooth response. For small subsets (a couple of SKALA4.1 antennas and a 16-element array) of a low-frequency instrument station of the Square Kilometre Array, the combination of large mutual coupling and antenna geometry creates systematic distortions in the element frequency responses. This phenomenon compromises the station spectral smoothness response versus frequency. However, we demonstrate that it is possible to partially mitigate these frequency structures by reconfiguring the antenna distribution based on exclusion zones. (C) The Authors.