The CROME experiment - timing and effective aperture

The CROME experiment in Karlsruhe aims to measure the microwave emission of extended air showers. The setup consists of several parabolic reflector antennas that are equipped with detectors sensitive in the GHz range. The detector is located within the KASCADE-Grande cosmic ray detector. Every time a shower is detected by KASCADE-Grande, a trigger is sent to CROME and the data is read out. To calculate the expected time window of the signal in dependence on the shower geometry, the systematic uncertainties of the timing of the CROME detector and the trigger chain have to be studied. Furthermore, the effective area of the detector determines the sensitivity of the setup for showers crossing the field of view. Using the measurement uncertainties of the KASCADE-Grande array and the measured gain pattern of the CROME antennas, the effective area can be estimated for every shower geometry.