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 9318768Areas 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