  The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will consist of an array of three types
of telescopes covering a wide energy range, from tens of GeV up to more than
100 TeV. The high energy section (> 3 TeV) will be covered by the Small Size
Telescopes (SST). ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante
Italiana) is a flagship project of the Italian Ministry of Research and
Education led by INAF, aiming at the design and construction of a prototype of
the Dual Mirror SST. In a second phase the ASTRI project foresees the
installation of the first elements of the SST array at the CTA southern site, a
mini-array of 5-7 telescopes. The optimization of the layout of this mini-array
embedded in the SST array of the CTA Observatory has been the object of an
intense simulation effort. In this work we present the expected mini-array
performance in terms of energy threshold, angular and energy resolution and
sensitivity.
