Square Kilometer Array:

� Largest Radio Astronomy Telescope

• Over 1.000.000m2 antenna collecting area

• 50x more sensitive than worlds best Interferometer

• Up to 10.000 faster in survey speed

• Base lines up to 3000+ km.

• Frequency range: 50 MHz – 15 GHz

• Clear-aperture, offset-Gregorian optics design for Dish

• Real time signal processing (>100x )

Consortia: Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, India, China

Introduction

The SKA will have: – up to 3000 dishes, with:

– wide band single pixel feeds– phased array feeds– ~1 GHz to >10 GHz

– up to 250 dense Aperture Array stations (56m diameter), with:– ~70,000 dual pol elements, so ~150,000

receiver chains,total 40 M elements

– ~400-~1400 MHz

– up to 250 sparse Aperture Array stations (180m diameter), with:– ~10,000 dual pol elements, so ~20,000

receiver chains, total 5 M elements – ~50-~450 MHz

SKA Summary

South Africa (Cape Town) Precursors

Home to: 64x Meerkat190x SKA Dish-Mid and 250x SKA MFAA (AIP)Karoo

Single Point Feed Wideband

64x Meerkat13.5m diam

Vivaldi Array (Dense)Dual polarisation (MFAA)

SKA Sites

SKA Sites

Footer text

Australia (Perth)

Home to: 36x ASKAP, 60x SKA Dish-Survey and 2.500.000x LFAA

Boolardy

36x ASKAP 12m diam

Phased Array Feed

Precursors CSIRO

Murchison Widefield Array128 x 16, 80 – 300 MHz (ICRAR)

Using composite carbon fibre, single piece prototype (Canada)

SKA Dish Prototype

� Airborne

� Satellites

� Wireless

� Short wave Propagation

RFI Challenge

� Over the horizon radar

� Equipment made RFI

� Frequency and time domain interferences

� Very High Spec on LNA ! !

SKA Real Time Data

• SKA 1 : 10% of full array– PDR e/o 2014– CDR e/o 2016– Procurements & Tenders 2017– SKA1 Construction 2018 - 2023– Integration of Precursors into SKA1 Array 2020

• Early Science 2020• Science program starts 2023

• SKA 2 : 100% of planned array– Detailed Design of SKA2 2018 – 2021– SKA2 Construction 2023 - 2030

Schedule

Thank You

www.skatelescope.org

SKA Baseline Frequency Coverage

SKA1_low911 stationsX 289 elements

SKA1_mid array190 SKA dishes (15m) +64 Meerkat (13.5m)dishes

SKA1_survey60 SKA dishes (15m) +38 ASKAP (12m)dishes

100MHz 300MHz 1GHz 3GHz 10GHz

1m 30cm 10cm 3cm3m

ν

λ

50 – 300MHz

350 – 1050MHz

.95 – 1.76 GHz

1.65 – 3.05 GHz

2.8 – 5.18 GHz

4.6 – 13.8 GHz

250 MHz

808 MHz

1403 MHz

2380 MHz

2500 MHz

2 x 2500 MHz

350 – 900MHz

650 – 1670MHz

1500 – 4000MHz

500 MHz

500 MHz

500 MHz

Band 1

Band 2

Band 3

Band 4

Band 5 X- Band

UHF- Band

L - Band

DSN 70m Tsys=18 Ae/Ts= 145 year 1965Arecibo 305m Tsys=25 Ae/Ts= 1414 1970VLA 27x25m Tsys=32 Ae/Ts= 280 1982

GBT 100m Tsys=20 Ae/Ts= 285 2000ALMA 64x12m Tsys=50 Ae/Ts= 98 2013SKA 1km^2 Tsys=50 Ae/Ts= 20.000 2030

Comparison

Arecibo, Radio Telescope ALMA, mm and sub mm Telescope

Comparison Imaging