Learning from observations of the microwave background at small angular scales

In this paper, we focus our attention on the following question: How well can we recover the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from the maps of a given experiment? Each experiment is described by a pixelization scale, a beam size, a noise level, and a sky coverage. We use accurate numerical simulations of the microwave sky and a cold dark matter model for structure formation in the universe. Angular scales smaller than those of previous simulations are included. The spectrum obtained from the simulated maps is compared appropriately with the theoretical one. Relative deviations between these spectra are estimated. Various contributions to these deviations are analyzed. The method used for spectra comparisons is discussed.