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MIRANdA and the Square Kilometre Array

CSIRO's antenna research has always had strong links to Australia's radioastronomy facilities, such as the famous Parkes "Dish", and the Australia Telescope National Facility.

Parkes RadiotelescopeParkes Radiotelescope

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international project to develop the world's "next generation" radiotelescope. Information about he project can be found at the SKA website. Australia is on a shortlist of two countries to host the SKA, and is also a major contributor to SKA science and technology. The ICT Centre's involvement is via two technology demonstrator projects: the New Technology Demonstrator (NTD), and MIRANdA.

The NTD Project

The NTD is a project funded under the Australian Major National Research Facility scheme. The goal of the NTD is to demonstrate radioastronomy using small dishes equipped with digital phased array feeds. The digital phased array feed allows much wider bandwidth and field-of-view than a conventional feed, since the digital beamformer can correct for the usual aberrations present in a reflector antenna when the main beam is scanned off-axis.

NTD Demonstrator Prototype linear connected array under test
Eastern dish of the NTD at the Radiophysics Lab, showing the support frame for the focal plane array Experimental prototype linear connected array under test in CSIRO's near-field antenna test range.

The MIRANdA Project

MIRANdA is part of MIRA, the Mileura International Radio Array. To find out more about MIRA, you can visit the MIRA web site. MIRANdA is the MIRA Large-N (N for number of antennas), small-d (d for the diameter of the primary antennas) Array, and will comprise 30 dishes of 12m diameter, located at the proposed Australian SKA site in Western Australia.

MIRANdA VisualisationArtist's impression of the MIRANdA Array in Western Australia

CSIRO is developing a new type of wideband phased array feed for MIRANdA, based on the concept of the Connected Array1. A 5 by 4 element, dual polarization (40 elements in all) prototype array is presently under construction.

1. Hansen, R.C., "Linear Connected Arrays", IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, vol. 3, 2004, pp 154-156.