On the possibility of aperture synthesis with a single mobile antenna in radio astronomy

The classic aperture synthesis widely used in radio astronomy, synthetic aperture radar, and remote sensing is based on the measurement of the degree of spatial coherence in the diffraction pattern of a radio emission source. All these applications imply correlation with a coherent reference signal. The possibility of obtaining the same information from the autocorrelation of a signal recorded on a single, mobile antenna is considered. Comparison of the output of an ordinary cross-correlation two-element radio interferometer and the autocorrelation output of a mobile antenna shows a similarity that allows extraction of information about the radio source spatial coherence in the latter case. The limitations of this method of aperture synthesis are considered.