THousand Element Array (THEA)

As part of the development path towards a new radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, a demonstrator phased-array system (THEA) is currently being build in the Netherlands. THEA consists of 1024 receiving elements connected to a novel mixed RF/digital beamforming architecture that produces 32 beams simultaneously. Adaptive digital nulling techniques are applied to reduce the effect of interfering signals. A system overview is presented as well as some preliminary results.