MID-Radio Telescope, Single Pixel Feed Packages for the Square Kilometer Array: An Overview
Journal article, 2021

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, enabling science with unprecedented detail and survey speed.The project spans over a decade and is now at a mature stage, ready to enter the construction and integration phase. In the fully deployed state, the MID-Telescope consists of a 150-km diameter array of offset Gregorian antennas installed in the radio quiet zone of the Karoo desert (South Africa). Each antenna is equipped with three feed packages, that are precision positioned in the sub-reflector focus by a feed indexer platform. The total observational bandwidth (0.35-15.4GHz) is segmented into seven bands. Band 1 (0.35 – 1.05 GHz) and Band 2 (0.95 – 1.76 GHz) are implemented as individual feed packages. The remaining five bands (Bands 3, 4, 5a, 5b, and 6) are combined in a single feed package. Initially only Band 5a (4.6 – 8.5 GHz) and Band 5b (8.3 – 15.4 GHz) will be installed. This paper provides an overview of recent progress on design, test and integration of each feed package as well as project and science goals, timeline and path to construction.

Dish

SKA

Feeds

wideband antenna

arrays

Bandwidth

Telescopes

radio telescope

Radio astronomy

reflector feeds

square kilometre array

quad-ridge flared horn

qrfh

LNA

MID-telescope

wideband

interferometric arrays

single pixel feed

Author

Alice Pellegrini

SKA Organisation

Jonas Flygare

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory

Isak P. Theron

EMSS Antennas

R. Lehmensiek

EMSS Antennas

Adriaan Peens-Hough

South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)

Jamie Leech

University of Oxford

Michael E. Jones

University of Oxford

Angela C. Taylor

University of Oxford

Robert E. J. Watkins

University of Oxford

Lei Liu

University of Oxford

Andre Hector

University of Oxford

Biao Du

Joint Laboratory for Radio Astronomy Technology/The 54th Research Institute of CETC

Yang Wu

Joint Laboratory for Radio Astronomy Technology/The 54th Research Institute of CETC

IEEE Journal of Microwaves

26928388 (eISSN)

Vol. 1 1 428-437 9318768

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

Roots

Basic sciences

Infrastructure

Onsala Space Observatory

DOI

10.1109/JMW.2020.3034029

More information

Latest update

1/25/2024