1. MeerKAT--The South African Array With Composite Dishes and Wide-Band Single Pixel Feeds.
- Author
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JONAS, JUSTIN L.
- Subjects
RADIO telescopes ,PIXELS ,BANDWIDTHS ,ANTENNAS (Electronics) ,RADIO frequency ,RADIO interference - Abstract
The MeerKAT is a precursor for the "small dish plus single-pixel wide-band feed" scenario for the Square Kilometre Array (5KA). The current goal specification is for an array of 80 12-m dishes operating over a continuous frequency range of 0.7-10 GHz, thus the individual receptors match the SKA draft specification for midband dishes. The proposed array configuration is centrally concentrated with 70% of the collecting area within a 7OO-m-diameter circle and the remaining 30% extending out to baselines of 10 kin. The site for MeerKAT lies within a radio quiet reserve established in the remote and Northern Cape province of South Africa. The technologies and techniques that MeerKAT will develop and evaluate include wide-bandwidth feeds, low-cost dish antennas, instrumentation for high dynamic range observations, packet-switched array processing architectures, shielding of component radio-frequency interference (RFI), mitigation of external RFI, and low-cost and reliable remote telescope operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2009
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