Active antenna development for the SKA

Author

Jiwani, Aziz ; Juswardy, Budi ; Padhi, Shantanu ; De Vaate, Jan Geralt bij ; Hall, Peter

Author_Institution

Int. Centre for Radio Astron. Res., Curtin Univ., Perth, WA, Australia

fYear

2011

Firstpage

1186

Lastpage

1189

Abstract

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the most sensitive radio telescope ever built. It is divided into three operating bands. Sparse aperture arrays (SKA-low) are used at the lowest operating band of 70 - 450 MHz. The International Centre for Radio Astronomy (ICRAR) is exploring conical spiral antennas as one candidate antenna design for SKA-low. One of the attractive features of the conical spiral antenna is its frequency-stable impedance. This helps in matching it to external components such as a low-noise amplifier (LNA). A prototype LNA based on GaAs HEMT technology that might be suitable for the conical spiral antenna has been evaluated. Presented in this paper is the current design path for a conical spiral antenna with attached LNA.

Keywords

UHF antennas; VHF antennas; active antenna arrays; aperture antennas; conical antennas; gallium arsenide; high electron mobility transistors; low noise amplifiers; radiotelescopes; spiral antennas; HEMT technology; International Centre for Radio Astronomy; LNA; SKA; active antenna development; candidate antenna design; conical spiral antenna; frequency-stable impedance; low-noise amplifier; sensitive radio telescope; sparse aperture arrays; square kilometre array; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Arrays; Noise; Prototypes; Spirals; Temperature measurement; SKA; frequency independent antenna; low-noise amplifiers (LNA); radio astronomy;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Conference Proceedings (APMC), 2011 Asia-Pacific

Conference_Location

Melbourne, VIC

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-2034-5

Type

conf

Filename

6173969