Imaging Speed of Antenna Coupled Kinetic Inductance Detectors in the SAFARI/SPICA Scenario

In this paper we present the comparison in terms of acquisition speed between octave bandwidth radiometric imagers that are based either on antenna coupled or bolometer coupled direct detection instruments. This comparison is based on an accurate EM methodology to compute the received power in antenna coupled as well as in bolometric detectors. The considered configurations are all characterized by dielectric lenses which can be coupled to bolometric focal planes, double slot feeds or leaky wave enhanced feeds. The acquisition speeds that can be obtained via these architectures are compared in the Safari/Spica imaging scenario. The comparison shows that the leaky lens structures are significantly outperforming the double slot configurations. The leaky lens antenna also outperforms the bolometric architectures, unless noise coming from the spill over is of no concern (i.e. cold box scenarios). © 2014 European Association on Antennas and Propagation.