Polarization studies of Vivaldi aperture arrays for the Square Kilometre Array

This paper describes polarization studies of Vivaldi aperture arrays for the Square Kilometre Array. Three different array configurations will be considered: a rectangular configuration, a rotated configuration and an array with bended aluminum plates. The advantage of the last configuration is that one row of elements can be made cost-effectively from one aluminum plate. For all configurations the intrinsic cross polarization ratio (IXR) is determined for different array sizes. It turned out that the the IXR of the array with bended aluminum plates is slightly worse than for the other two configurations.