IEEE Access (Jan 2022)

Feasibility Study of a W-Band Multibeam Heterodyne Receiver for the Gregorian Focus of the Sardinia Radio Telescope

  • A. Navarrini,
  • L. Olmi,
  • R. Nesti,
  • P. Ortu,
  • P. Marongiu,
  • A. Orlati,
  • A. Scalambra,
  • A. Orfei,
  • J. Roda,
  • A. Cattani,
  • S. Leurini,
  • F. Govoni,
  • M. Murgia,
  • E. Carretti,
  • D. Fierro,
  • A. Pellizzoni

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3153492
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10
pp. 26369 – 26403

Abstract

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We report on the feasibility study of a W-band multibeam heterodyne receiver for the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), a general purpose fully steerable 64-m diameter antenna located on the Sardinia island, Italy, managed by INAF (“Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica,” Italy). The W-band front-end is designed for the telescope Gregorian focal plane and will detect both continuum and molecular spectral lines from astronomical sources and radio emission from the Sun in the 3 mm atmospheric window. The goal specification of the receiver is a $4\times 4$ focal plane array operating in dual-linear polarization with a front-end consisting of feed-horns placed in cascade with waveguide Orthomode Transducers (OMTs) and LNAs (Low Noise Amplifiers) cryogenically cooled at $\approx $ 20 K. The instantaneous FoV (Field of View) of the telescope is limited by the shaping of the 64-m primary and 7.9-m secondary mirrors. The cryogenic modules are designed to fit in the usable area of the focal plane and provide high-quality beam patterns with high antenna efficiency across the 70 – 116 GHz Radio Frequency (RF) band. The FoV covered by the $4\times 4$ array is $2.15\times 2.15$ arcmin2, unfilled, with separation between contiguous elements of 43 arcsec. Dual-sideband separation (2SB) down-conversion mixers are designed to be placed at the cryostat output and arranged in four four-pixel down-conversion modules with 4 – 12 GHz Intermediate Frequency (IF) bands (both Upper Side Band and Lower Side Band selectable for any pixel and polarization). The receiver utilizes a mechanical derotator to track the parallactic angle.

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