Radiation Efficiency Calculation of the Murchison Widefield Array Using a Power Wave Based Framework

We present a power wave based framework to compute the radiation efficiency of phased arrays which aims to simplify and minimize the amount of new simulated/measured data required by reusing prior knowledge of embedded element patterns (EEPs). The framework uses EEPs, S-parameters, and knowledge of low-noise amplifier (LNA) impedance to perform the calculation. Based on the previously simulated Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) embedded element pattern and S-parameters, we calculated the radiation efficiency of the MWA to be no less than 94% whereby the lowest efficiency occurs at approximately 242 MHz.