GMRT
GMRT
Submitted by
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R. V. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, BENGALURU – 560059
(Autonomous Institution Affiliated to VTU, Belagavi)
CERTIFICATE
This is to Certify that the technical seminar titled “The Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope”
is carried out by Sanarahamat A Kodakeri (1RV15AS048) who is a bonafide student of R.
V. College of Engineering, Bengaluru in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the course
15AS82–Technical seminar during the year 2018-19. It is certified that all
corrections/suggestions indicated for the internal assessment have been incorporated in the
report deposited in the departmental library. The report has been approved as it satisfies the
academic requirements in respect of Technical seminar prescribed by the department.
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Rashtreeya Sikshana Samithi Trust
R. V. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, BENGALURU – 560059
(Autonomous Institution Affiliated to VTU, Belagavi)
DECLARATION
Place: Bengaluru
Date: 10/05/2019
Sanarahamat A Kodakeri
(1RV15AS048)
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ABSTRACT
This report is prepared based on the study carried out on the topic “THE GIANT
METERWAVE RADIO TELESCOPE” as part of the technical seminar course of the VIII
semester Aerospace engineering RVCE. This report contains a detailed survey of the project
defined in the topic that contains the introduction to the topic, its study and a short derived
conclusion.
The topic as suggested by name is related to avionics in the space industry and hence the
electronics and avionics point of view of the topic is considered in this report.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would hereby like to give my heartfelt thanks to the staff in charge of avionics Mr. Deepak
Bana sir for guiding and evaluating this report. My thanks extend to the Head of the
Department of Aerospace Engineering R.V. C .E Dr. R S Kulkarni who has guided us in the
curriculum and provided a way to complete the aim of the course. I would also thank the
entire department of Aerospace Engineering for providing us with the facility and equipments
to format and present mine and the work of all the students.
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 an enlightened antenna of GMRT................................................................................ 8
Figure 2 Block Diagram of Front end system of GMRT ......................................................... 12
Figure 3 Block Diagram of Feed Positioning System of GMRT ............................................. 13
Figure 4 Principle of position control applied in GMRT ......................................................... 15
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TABLE OF CONTENT
CERTIFICATE……………………………………………………………………………ii
DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………………iii
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….4
ACKNOWLEDGMENT…………………………………………………………………..5
LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………..6
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………8
GOALS OF GMRT……………………………………………………………………….10
GMRT SUBSYSTEMS……………………………………………...……………………11
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………19
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………….20
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INTRODUCTION
The giant meter wave radio telescope is an array of 30 completely steerable radio telescopes
observing in meter wave length. Each telescope dish is of 45m diameter and is located in
Pune, Maharashtra India. An antenna dish of the GMRT is shown in fig-1. The observatory is
operated by National Center for Radio Astrophysics which is a part of Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research, Mumbai. The radio wavelength is of the telescope is specifically
chosen considering the less man-made radio interference of this part of the spectrum in India.
There hasn’t been a facility as big as this in the world so far even though there are many
astrophysical studies involving the meter wavelength.
The site of the observatory is selected considering many criteria. The current location is
known to have less man made radio noise in the operating spectrum of GMRT, availability of
good communication, vicinity of educational, industrial and other infrastructure, a good
geographical latitude above the geomagnetic equator in north so as to have a reasonably less
ionospheric interaction and yet be able to observe a reasonable part of the southern sky as
well. The number and configuration of the dishes was optimized to meet the principal
astrophysical objectives which require sensitivity at high angular resolution as well as ability
to image radio emission from diffuse extended regions. Fourteen of the thirty dishes are
located more or less randomly in a compact central array in a region of about 1 sq km. The
remaining sixteen dishes are spread out along the 3 arms of an approximately ‘Y’-shaped
configuration over a much larger region, with the longest interferometric baseline of about 25
km. The multiplication or correlation of radio signals from all the 435 possible pairs of
antennas or interferometers over several hours will thus enable radio images of celestial
objects to be synthesized with a resolution equivalent to that obtainable with a single gigantic
dish 25 kilometres in diameter! The array will operate in six frequency bands centred on 50,
153, 233, 325, 610 and 1420 MHz. All these feeds provide dual polarization outputs. In some
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configurations, dual-frequency observations are also possible. The highest angular resolution
achievable will range from about 60 arcsec at the lowest frequencies to about 2 arcsec at 1.4 GHz.
The dish has been made light-weight and of low solidity by replacing the conventional back-
up structure by a series of rope trusses (made of thin stainless steel wire ropes) stretched
between 16 parabolic frames made of tubular steel. The wire ropes are tensioned suitably to
make a mosaic of plane facets approximating a parabolic surface. A light-weight thin wire
mesh (made of 0.55 mm diameter stainless steel wire) with a grid size varying from 10 X 10
mm in the central part of the dish to 20 X 20 mm in the outer parts, stretched over the rope
truss facets forms the reflecting surface of the dish. The low-solidity design cuts down the
wind forces by a large factor and is particularly suited to Indian conditions where there is no
snowfall in the plains. The overall wind forces and the resulting torques for a 45-m GMRT
dish are similar to those for only a 22-m dish of conventional design, thus resulting in
substantial savings in cost.
The dish is connected to a `cradle' which is supported by two elevation bearings on a yoke
placed on a 3.6 m diameter slewing-ring bearing secured on the top of a 15 meter high
concrete tower. The weight of the disk is about 80 tonnes and the counter-weight is about 40
tonnes. The dishes have alt-azimuth mount. The salient parameters and specifications of each
dish are summarized in the Table.
Antenna specification
The large size of the parabolic dishes implies that GMRT will have over three times the
collecting area of the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, USA which consists of 27
antennas of 25 m diameter and is presently the world's largest aperture synthesis telescope
operating at centimetre wavelengths. At 327 MHz, GMRT will be about 8 times more
sensitive than VLA because of the larger collecting area, higher efficiency of the antennas
and a substantially wider usable bandwidth because of the low level of man-made radio
interference in India.
Electronic Frontends and Backend: Apart from the novel low-cost design of the parabolic
dishes, the instrument has state-of-the-art electronics systems developed indigenously and
consisting of the following main sub units.
Antenna feeds at six different frequency bands between 50 MHz and 1500 MHz,
having good polarization characteristics as well as simultaneous multiband operation.
Low-noise amplifiers, local oscillator synthesizers, mixers, IF amplifiers.
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Optical fibres linking the entire array with the CEB. These are used both for the
telemetry signals and local oscillator phase reference communication between the
CEB and each antenna base.
A digital 2,30,000-channel FX-type correlator providing up to 128 spectral channels
and covering a maximum bandwidth of 32 MHz
GOAL OF GMRT
Although GMRT will be a very versatile instrument for investigating a variety of radio
astrophysical problems ranging from our nearby Solar system to the edge of the observable
Universe, two of its most important astrophysical objectives are:
To detect the highly redshifted spectral line of neutral Hydrogen expected from
protoclusters or protogalaxies before they condensed to form galaxies in the early
phase of the Universe and
To search for and study rapidly-rotating Pulsars in our galaxy.
Epoch of galaxy formation: Theories of the formation of structure in the Big-Bang Universe
predict the presence of proto galaxies or proto clusters of galaxies made up of clouds of
neutral Hydrogen gas before their gravitational condensation into galaxies. It should in
principle be possible to detect these through the well known radio line emitted by neutral
Hydrogen at a frequency of 1420 MHz. The line is however expected to be very weak and
redshifted to metre wavelengths because of the expansion of the Universe between emission,
billions of years ago, and detection at the present epoch. For clouds of Hydrogen between
redshifts 3 and 10 (corresponding to epochs when the Universe had attained only a few
percent of its present age), the line should be observable between frequencies of about 350
and 130 MHz. Detection of such neutral Hydrogen clouds is of fundamental astrophysical
importance and can provide very important constraints to the theories of formation of
galaxies and clusters.
Pulsars and neutron stars: GMRT should also be an ideal instrument for the study of
Pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars with extremely high densities of about 200 million tons
per cubic cm). Its large collecting area can lead to a 3 to 4-fold increase in the number of
Pulsars known in our Galaxy. A particularly important programme in Pulsar research will be
the search for rapidly rotating pulsars with periods in range of milli-seconds and for pulsars
in binary systems. Because of the strong gravitational fields associated with them, such
systems form excellent laboratories for testing gravitational theories such as Einstein's
General Theory of Relativity. Accurate timing measurements to detect extremely minute
changes in the pulse arrival times from a group of pulsars could also lead to the detection of a
weak background of gravitational radiation believed to have been generated by asymmetries
in the very early Universe when it was less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a
second old.
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Galactic and extragalactic radio sources: Because of its large collecting area and wide
frequency coverage, GMRT will be an invaluable and highly versatile instrument for
studying many other problems of astrophysics. These include studies of Solar and planetary
radio emissions; relationship between Solar activity and disturbances in the interplanetary
medium; surveys of the Galactic plane to investigate the physics and evolution of clouds of
ionized hydrogen associated with young stars as well as no thermal emission from planetary
nebulae and supernova remnants associated with late stages of stellar evolution; exotic types
of stars and stellar systems whose radio emission could be hundreds of times more intense
than that of the Sun; monitoring the variability of extragalactic radio sources, supernovae in
external galaxies and transient sources in the Galactic plane; detection of the Deuterium line
and Hydrogen recombination lines in the interstellar medium; halos and large-scale structure
in spiral galaxies; structures and spectra of quasars and radio galaxies and their use in
cosmological tests; studies of Hydrogen gas in external galaxies and streaming motions in the
nearby Universe.
GMRT SUB-SYSTEMS
Giant Meter-wave Radio Telescope (GMRT) Front Ends have been designed to operate at 5
frequency bands centered at 50 MHz, 150 MHz, 235 MHz, 327 MHz, 610 MHz and L-Band
extending from 1000 to 1450 MHz. The L-Band is split into four sub-bands centered at 1060
MHz, 1170 MHz, 1280 MHz and 1390 MHz, each with a bandwidth of 120 MHz .The 150
MHz, 235 MHz and 327 MHz bands have about 40 MHz bandwidth and the 610 MHz band
has about 60 MHz bandwidth. The low noise front end of the receiving system of GMRT has
been designed to receive dual polarization. Lower frequency bands from 150 to 610 MHz
have dual circular polarization channels (Right Hand Circular and Left Hand Circular
polarization) which have been conveniently named as CH1 and CH2, respectively. The higher
frequency L-Band has dual linear polarization channels (Vertical and Horizontal polarization)
and they have been named CH1 and CH2 respectively. The front end system has flexibility to
be configured for either dual polarization observation at a single frequency band or single
polarization observation at two different frequency bands. The polarization channels can be
swapped whenever required. For observing strong radio sources like "sun", the selectable
solar attenuators of 14 dB, 33 dB or~ dB can be used. The front end has RF termination
facility also. Any band of the receiver can be switched OFF, whenever not in use, with the RF
on/off facility provided in the front end. The receiver can be calibrated by injecting one of the
four levels of calibrated noise, named Low cal, Medium cal, High cal and Extra-high cal
depending upon the flux density of the source being observed. To minimize cross coupling
between channels, a phase switching facility using Walsh functions has been provided in the
post unit. The functional schematic of the front end system is as shown in figure-2.
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Figure 2 Block Diagram of Front end system of GMRT
The low noise amplifiers (LNA) for all the frequency bands are un-cooled. At 150 MHz
band, Silicon Bipolar MMIC amplifier of Agilent Technologies has been used to design the
LNA. The 235 MHz, 327 MHz and 610 MHz, the LNA designs are based on GaAs
MESFETS from Agilent Technologies. For the L-Band LNA design, High Electron Mobility
Transistors (HEMT) of Fujitsu has been used. For RF switching applications like band
selection, RF on/off etc GaAs MESFET MMIC switches have been used. For polarizer
designs, WIRELINE Quadrature hybrids of SAGE Laboratories make have been used for 150
MHz, 235 MHz and 327 MHZ bands. The 610 MHz band polarizer has been designed using
Branchline Quadrature hybrid. Table -1 summarizes system noise temperatures for different
frequency bands.
System Temperatures
Receiver
Input Temp.
Polarizer LNA Ground Sky System
Frequency Cable (Includes
Loss Temp. Temp. Temp. Temp. Bandwidth
Band Loss cable
L TLNA TGnd TSky TSys [MHz]
[MHz] L’ losses)
[K] [K] [K] [K] [K]
[dB] TR
[K]
150 0.2 0.75 150 260 12 308 580 40
235 0.55 0.25 35 103 32 99 234 40
327 0.13 0.18 30 55 13 40 108 40
610 0.22 0.15 30 59 32 10 101 60
1060 0.22 - 35 53 25 5 83 120
1170 0.22 - 32 49 24 4 77 120
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1280 0.22 - 30 47 23 4 74 120
1390 0.22 - 28 45 23 4 72 120
The feed drive circuit consists of a half HP DC servo motor with brakes. This is driven by
power MOSFETS. An 'H' configuration is used to enable bidirectional rotation. Hence at a
time two diagonally opposite MOSFET are switched ON. The speed of the motor is
controlled using Pulse width Modulation technique. The PWM is generated by 8051 based
microcontroller. The appropriate software produces the trapezoidal speed profile for
achieving high accuracy of 1.054 arc min. The microcontroller also facilitates communication
with control room using RS485 protocol. The feed rotation is restricted to 275 deg. as feed
cable wrap hose carries the front end, RF Control and Monitor cables. End limit switches are
provided at -15 deg. and 285 deg. along with stoppers for ensuring safety from over travel of
feed turret. A CAL switch is provided at 275 deg. for calibration of the incremental encoder.
There is a further facility to check the encoder value using the internal marker UA0. A
current limit circuitry is provided to limit armature current to 12 amp which is the maximum
rating of the drive motor. The NVRAM IC DS1220Y is provided to retain current position in
case of power failure and thereby avoiding frequent recalibration. Manual rotation is
facilitated from antenna base .LCD is provided in the electronics unit at the base (to be
implemented) for ease and accurate rotation of feed from the antenna base. A block diagram
of the Feed positioning system of GMRT is shown in fig-3.
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Feed Positioning System as the name suggests is used to precisely position or focus the feeds
that are located on the four faces of the rotating turret. The Telescope is to be operated at
150,233,327,610 and 1420 MHZ. The feed can be positioned for desired frequency by
rotating the feed turret. The precise positioning is achieved by using pulse width modulation
technique to vary the speed of the DC motor .This is implemented with 8051 based
microcontroller and feed drive cassette with power MOSFETS in 'H' configuration. The feed
drive motor is coupled to the feed turret through two stages of gear reduction, first is a worm
gear with 300:1 reduction and second one is primary bull gear with 5:1 reduction, thus total
gear reduction is 1500:1. The incremental encoder is used for marking the position. As shown
in the figure the encoder is connected to the output shaft of the worm gear reduction .This
means that for one complete rotation of the turret, the encoder rotates for 5 times. Encoder
gives the direction and count signals which acts as a position feedback to 8051FA
microcontroller. The CPU card is based on 8051FA microcontroller. 8051 has inbuilt serial
port through which it communicates to the antenna base computer through RS485 link.
Microcontroller 8051FA gives the command signals like direction, RGSO and PWM to the
drive card which drives the MOSFET Bridge to rotate the motor in proper direction and set
speed and thus feed is focussed with an accuracy of one arc minute pointing.
Due to the above bull gear and gear box arrangement of the feed, when feed completes one
rotation (rotation through 360 degrees), encoder goes through five rotations. Encoder
generates 4096 pulses during one complete rotation. Thus a complete rotation by feed system
will generate 20480 encoder pulses .One pulse from the encoder thus corresponds to 0.0175
degree rotation of the feed (i.e. approximately one arc minute). These encoder pulses are
counted by the microcontroller to determine the angular displacement of the feed system.
The Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope, an aperture synthesis array consisting of 30 fully
steerable parabolic dishes of 45 metre diameter each. Motion of these giant antennas need to
be controlled by a precession control system. Pointing of the antennas should be accurate i.e.
the radio source, antenna focused and the antenna centre should be aligned. The GMRT servo
system has designed with three nested control loops to achieve the pointing accuracy of (1 or
2) arc minutes RMS for wind speed less than 20 km/ph. Because of high weight alt-azimuth
mount is most favourable approach for positioning the dish antenna. Here the elevation axis
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sits on the azimuth drive. The elevation drive moves antenna up and down directions while
azimuth drive moves antenna in clockwise & counter-clockwise direction, hence enabling the
antenna to point anywhere in the sky. The principle of position control as applied to GMRT is
shown in the fig-4
The Control and Monitor System of a Radio Telescope is required to provide the necessary
co-ordination between the various building blocks of the receiver system. This system is used
for Controlling the activities of the various building blocks of GMRT like
FE,LO,IF,BB,SERVO and FPS etc and Monitor the healthiness of the same in each of the
antenna shells and CEB. It provides the human interface to persons like Telescope Observers,
Scientists and maintenance personnel for operating all the antennas from CEB. It has to
monitor all parts of the telescope system for correct operation and alert the operator in case of
any anomalous behaviour. And in the case of severe fault conditions, safety procedures have
to be initiated locally. It has also to prevent human error from placing the telescope in a
dangerous situation. This Control and Monitor System for GMRT tries to meet all the points
mentioned above.
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System specifications of C & M system
Non-coherent FSK techniques are used for data transmission over OPTICAL FIBER
links.
Data Baud Rate is 250 Kbits/sec.
Bit interleaved techniques are used for multiplexing Telemetry, Voice, and Sync. Dial
and Aux. Channels.
Polynomial and checksum ERROR DETECTION with ARQ capability.
The Bit Error Probability is 10 ¯10.
The GMRT receiver system uses the SUPERHETERODYNE principle for processing the
data. Hence cosmic signals are to be converted into suitable frequency band
called Intermediate Frequency (IF). The IF serves the purpose of transmission of observed
signals from antenna base to Central Electronics Building (CEB). The conversion also helps
in the transmission through Fiber Optic Cable. The conversion of RF signals is done with the
help of Local Oscillator (LO System) frequencies, which are generated at the antenna base
using standard reference generated at CEB and transmitted frequencies. The two channels of
IF band are transmitted from antenna base to CEB and are given to Base Band for further
processing.
6. Sentinel System
GMRT consists of 30 antennas spreading over an area of 50 square kilometers. All the
Antenna Shells are equipped with various intelligent sub-systems for providing the best
results to this Radio Observatory. Hence it is a prime responsibility for providing safety and
protections to all these sub-systems especially in the remote antenna shells from intrusion,
fire, smoke, over temperature etc. All these parameters are getting monitored from the remote
antenna shells to the Control Room all around the clock. GMRT Sentinel System is taking the
full responsibility for monitoring and controlling the above parameters for smooth operation
of GMRT.
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7. Hot-line Telephony System
8. RF Shielding & Measurements
9. NCRA-GMRT Video Conferencing
GMRT consist of fiber optic transmitter and receiver for communication. Fiber optic cables
are used to connect one antenna to another and the antenna to the control station as well. Each
connection is made up of a bunch of fiber optic cables.
The initial design and development of correlator system started in the year of 1991. It was 2
antennas, then 4, 8, 16 and 32 antennae correlator. The 30-station single side-band, dual
polarization, ~230,000 channel FX correlator has been installed in the CEB in August 1998.
This correlator is designed to generate 128 spectral channels spread over a maximum
bandwidth of 16 MHz for each of the polarizations. Fringe stopping and fractional sample
time correction is done in the hardware. The design of the correlator for the second side-band
started. Full pledged correlator of 30 antennae, both polarizations & 32MHz bandwidth
started working since June 2002. This hardware correlator was mainly ASIC based FFT and
MAC boards. A digital 2, 30,000-channel FX-type correlator providing up to 128 spectral
channels and covering a maximum bandwidth of 32 MHz . This backend also had the pulsar
backend of In-correherant array (IA) and Phased Array (PA). In the year 2009, GMRT
Software Backend (GSB) integrated and released for internal observations, which was under
design and development since 2003. Once this GSB system got stabilized, in the year 2010
the ASIC based correlator and pulsar systems dismantled forever. GSB system is the main
backend being used for observations as on today. In the year 2006, started design and
development of FPGA (ROACH boards) based correlator. Initially single board 2 antennae
pocket correlator, and then 4, 8 & 16 antennae packetized (multi modular) correlator built.
The signal board design modified to use for 15 meter project at NCRA campus in the year
2014. Apart from the design and development of these backends needed to upgrade the
GMRT project capabilities, the group also done the study and development of many other
projects like RFI mitigation algorithm, temperature study and monitoring etc.
The digital backend is the section of the G.M.R.T. which deals with the digital conversion,
manipulation and storage of the analog signals coming from the baseband system. The signal
from the antenna after going through the baseband system is analog in form. This signal
needs to be converted into digital form, so that it could easily be worked upon using digital
signal processing. The signal after being converted into digital form is processed through FX
Correlator to generate cross amplitude and phase information among the 30 antennas to
synthesis the Stokes Parameters. The output from the correlator (FFT subsystem) is given in
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parallel to the Array Combiner for generating the Incoherent Array (IA) and Phased Array
(PA) outputs for pulsar observations.
The system control and command of the GMRT is controlled by this subsystem. This
subsystem controls the communication between the whole facilities by commands and also
controls the steering of the antennas and their motion.
Telemetry system
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CONCLUSION
The GMRT is a big forward step towards the development of space science in India. The
project has very high expectations in the fields of astrophysics and space science. As defined
in the goal of the project, it is designed to provide a higher resolution to study the outer space,
particularly the solar system, solar phenomenon, inter galactic space, quasars in the far away
galaxies and pulsars as well. The subsystems that are constructed provide a properly
functioning system and the under construction sub systems will enhance the working of the
telescope. With this telescope we will hopefully be able to study the formation of galaxies
and their early stages in the universe. The telescope is also expected to be able to study the
extremely rapidly rotating mass and energy emitting pulsars. These studies are the crucial
part of new age space science which experimentally proves or disproves the theories of
astrophysics that are applied to the universe for the past century.
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REFERENCES
1. Introduction to GMRT, Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope, Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research; online website www.gmrt.ncra.tifr.res.in
2. Goals of GMRT, Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research;
online website
3. The parts and subsystem of the GMRT, Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope, Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research; online website
4. Vision and current projects of the GMRT, Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope, Tata Institute
of Fundamental Research; online website
5. Antenna images and block diagrams of the electronic subsystems of GMRT, Giant Meterwave
Radio Telescope, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; online website.
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