See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/229003681

Development of a Low-Noise Wide-Band Phased-Array Feed

Article · August 2011

DOI: 10.1109/URSIGASS.2011.6123729

CITATIONS READS
3 1,085

5 authors, including:

B. Veidt Rob Messing

National Research Council Canada National Research Council Canada
65 PUBLICATIONS 552 CITATIONS 7 PUBLICATIONS 102 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Gary J. Hovey
Chalmers University of Technology
38 PUBLICATIONS 568 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by B. Veidt on 14 August 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Development of a Low-Noise Wide-Band Phased-Array Feed
Bruce Veidt1 , Tom Burgess1 , Rob Messing1 , Gary J. Hovey1 , and Rick J. Smegal2
1
Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, National Research Council of Canada, Box 248, Penticton, BC, V2A
6J9, Canada, bruce.veidt@nrc.gc.ca, tom.burgess@nrc.gc.ca, rob.messing@nrc.gc.ca, gary.hovey@nrc.gc.ca
2
Aardvark Resources, 205-606 Courtney Street, Victoria, BC V8W1B6 Canada, rsmegal@aardvarr.ca

Abstract
Low-noise phased-array feeds are a new way to expand the field of view of radio telescopes at centimetre wavelengths.
First generation engineering demonstrators of this technology have been constructed and tested by several institutes
worldwide. The development of second-generation phased-array feeds is now underway. We describe one effort to
design and build an astronomy-capable phased-array feed using techniques to reduce front-end noise and increase
system bandwidth.

1 Introduction

One key design requirement for future centimetre-wave radio telescopes is a wide instantaneous field of view
(FoV) to enable deep surveys of the early universe [1]. One way to achieve a large FoV is by deploying a large number
of small reflector antennas [2]. An even larger FoV is possible if a phased array is mounted at the focal plane of a
reflector antenna and multiple parallel beamformers form a set of adjacent beams on the sky [3]. Such phased-array
feeds (PAFs) have been under intense interest and analysis over the last decade and technology demonstrators have
been constructed and tested in the USA [4], Australia [5, 6], the Netherlands [7, 8], and Canada [9]. The success of
these demonstrators has stimulated plans for PAF upgrades to existing telescopes [10] and for new telescopes using
PAFs [1, 11].

All early demonstrators for PAF technology were technology demonstrators. They were designed to answer ques-
tions concerning calibration and beamforming, efficiency, and system noise, not for astronomical research. This focus
allowed designers to make compromises on system design. In particular, PAF demonstrators did not have state-of-
the-art system temperature, used off-line beamforming instead of a dedicated real-time hardware beamformer, and
processed narrow bandwidths. The next step in the evolution of this technology is to make PAF systems with very low
noise temperatures (∼ 20K), wide instantaneous bandwidth (≧ 500 MHz) and with real-time beamforming.

This paper will describe the work underway in the PAF group within the National Research Council of Canada
to develop a new PAF with sensitivity and bandwidth specifications suitable for radio astronomy. This new system is
called the Advanced Focal Array Demonstrator (AFAD) and is based upon experience gained from an earlier demon-
strator called the PHased-Array feed Demonstrator (PHAD) [9].

2 System Architecture

Specifications for AFAD are given in Table 1 and are expanded upon here. The frequency range is chosen to cover
the neutral hydrogen line at 1.42 GHz at the high end and to extend downward to observe doppler-shifted hydrogen. An
element spacing of 10 cm is chosen to prevent the appearance of grating lobes over the receiving band [12]. Polarimetry
is an important application of PAFs so this demonstrator will be fully capable of polarimetric observations. The array
size is sufficient for multibeam operation and is readily adaptable to available reflector antennas for testing. Only
a portion of the digitized input signal band is transmitted to the beamformer, limited by the available data rate of
common 10G optical fibre links.
 Table 1: Specifications for the Advanced Focal Array Demonstrator
Frequency range 0.7–1.5 GHz
Element spacing 10 cm (𝜆/2 @ 1.5 GHz)
Polarization Dual
Array size <1m×1m
Processed bandwidth 0.5 GHz

2.1 Vivaldi Array

AFAD will continue to use Vivaldi elements similar to those used in its predecessor [9] which were fabricated as
printed circuit boards using a loss-loss substrate. PHAD was highly modular and had low-noise amplifiers located
many centimetres from the feed point of the array elements. Since PHAD operated at room temperature, the loss in
the transmission lines from the LNAs to subsequent receiver stages led to a significant increase in system temperature.
AFAD will reduce transmission line loss by placing the LNA as close as possible to the array element feed point [13].
Slotline loss can also be reduced by increasing the thickness of the Vivaldi element, thereby increasing the surface
area over which currents flow. This increased thickness permits the LNA to be embedded within the element and
will provide excellent electromagnetic shielding. Although thick Vivaldi elements have been described elsewhere
[14, 15, 16], this is the first known attempt to integrate an LNA inside an element.

2.2 Receiver Chain

In contrast to other PAF systems, the AFAD receiver chain will not perform any analog frequency conversions.
Instead, this operation will be performed in the digital domain. Functions that will be performed in the analog domain
include amplification, filtering, equalization, and level control.

2.3 Analog-to-Digital Conversion

Each element will have a dedicated analog-to-digital converter (ADC) which will sample at 3 Gs/s with 8-bit
precision. The ADC will drive a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) which will downconvert and filter the signal
to baseband (0–0.5 GHz). The baseband signal is then transmitted to the beamformer over 10 Gb/s fibre-optic cable.

It is envisaged that the receiver analog and digital components be housed together in well-shielded modules, one
per array element. Because there will be ∼60 dB of analog gain, and also because of the proximity of analog and
digital subsystems, particular care will have to be taken in designing the shielding for this module. Figure 1 shows a
sketch of array elements and receiver modules for AFAD.

2.4 Beamformer

The AFAD beamformer will be located at the base of the radio telescope. It will be based upon custom FPGA
boards currently under development at our institute. Each board will have eight interconnected Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs
for a total processing capacity of 8 TMAC. With this processing power 8 boards will be required to form 32 beams
from 128 elements. Each board accepts 10-Gb/s streams from 16 elements. Each stream will be first divided into
512 frequency channels. These channelized signals are then distributed to other boards via Zone 2 ATCA backplane
interconnect. Once each board has data from all elements beams will be formed.

Besides beamforming, other modes will be required. A beamformer calibration mode (essentially cross-correlation
Figure 1: Sketch of the AFAD dual-polarized antenna array and receiver modules. Vivaldi elements are shown above
the ground plane (rendered translucent here). Receiver modules (below the ground plane) will plug directly into the
outputs of the active Vivaldi elements.

between elements) is required to determine weights. A gain/phase tracking facility is required to measure and com-
pensate for gain and phase variations in receiver chains by monitoring a calibration tone transmitted from near the
reflector surface. Another possible mode is to capture and store data snapshots for diagnostics or special experiments.

3 Conclusion

We have described a second-generation phased-array feed demonstrator for radio astronomy. This system will
have specifications suitable for radio astronomy observations, namely high sensitivity and wide bandwidth. This
demonstrator will employ Vivaldi elements with embedded LNAs to reduce loss and achieve high sensitivity, a direct-
sampling high-speed ADC to achieve wide bandwidth, and a high-performance FPGA-based beamformer to form
multiple wide-band beams.

References

[1] P. E. Dewdney, P. J. Hall, R. T. Schilizzi, and T. J. W. Lazio, “The Square Kilometre Array,” Proceedings of the
IEEE, vol. 97, pp. 1482–1496, Aug. 2009.

[2] J. Welch, D. Backer, L. Blitz, D.-J. Bock, G. Bower, C. Cheng, S. Croft, M. Dexter, G. Engargiola, E. Fields,
J. Forster, C. Gutierrez-Kraybill, C. Heiles, T. Helfer, S. Jorgensen, G. Keating, J. Lugten, D. MacMahon, O. Mil-
grome, D. Thornton, L. Urry, J. van Leeuwen, D. Werthimer, P. Williams, M. Wright, J. Tarter, R. Ackermann,
S. Atkinson, P. Backus, W. Barott, T. Bradford, M. Davis, D. DeBoer, J. Dreher, G. Harp, J. Jordan, T. Kilsdonk,
T. Pierson, K. Randall, J. Ross, S. Shostak, M. Fleming, C. Cork, A. Vitouchkine, N. Wadefalk, and S. Weinreb,
“The Allen Telescope Array: The first widefield, panchromatic, snapshot radio camera for radio astronomy and
SETI,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 97, pp. 1438–1447, Aug. 2009.
 [3] J. R. Fisher and R. F. Bradley, “Full-sampling focal plane array,” in Imaging at Radio Through Submillimeter
Wavelengths (J. G. Mangum and S. J. E. Radford, ed.), vol. 217 of ASP Conference Proceedings, pp. 11–18,
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 1999.

[4] K. F. Warnick, B. D. Jeffs, J. Landon, J. Waldron, D. Jones, J. R. Fisher, and R. Norrod, “BYU/NRAO 19-element
phased array feed modeling and experimental results,” in URSI General Assembly, p. J02p4, 2008.

[5] S. G. Hay and J. D. O’Sullivan, “Analysis of common-mode effects in a dual-polarized planar connected-array
antenna,” Radio Science, vol. 43, p. RS6S04, Dec. 2008.

[6] D. B. Hayman, T. S. Bird, K. P. Esselle, and P. J. Hall, “Experimental demonstration of focal plane array beam-
forming in a prototype radiotelescope,” Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 58, pp. 1922–
1934, June 2010.

[7] M. Ivashina, J. Bij de Vaate, R. Braun, and J. Bregman, “Focal plane arrays for large reflector antennas: First
results of a demonstrator project,” Proc. of SPIE, vol. 5489, pp. 1127–1138, 2004.

[8] W. van Cappellen and L. Bakker, “Initial results of the digital focal plane array demonstrator for APERTIF,” in
Deep Surveys of the Radio Universe with SKA Pathfinders, (Perth, WA), University of Western Australia, 2008.

[9] B. Veidt, T. Burgess, R. Messing, G. J. Hovey, and R. Smegal, “The DRAO Phased Array Feed Demonstrator:
Recent results,” in 13th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics, (Banff,
AB), pp. 1–4, Feb. 2009.
[10] A. van Ardenne, J. Bregman, W. van Cappellen, G. Kant, and J. Bij de Vaate, “Extending the field of view with
phased array techniques: Results of European SKA research,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 97, pp. 1531–1542,
Aug. 2009.

[11] D. R. DeBoer, R. G. Gough, J. D. Bunton, T. J. Cornwell, R. J. Beresford, S. Johnston, I. J. Feain, A. E. Schinckel,

C. A. Jackson, M. J. Kesteven, A. Chippendale, G. A. Hampson, J. D. O’Sullivan, S. G. Hay, C. E. Jacka, T. W.
Sweetnam, M. C. Storey, L. Ball, and B. J. Boyle, “Australian SKA Pathfinder: A high-dynamic range wide-field
of view survey telescope,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 97, pp. 1507–1521, Aug. 2009.

[12] J. R. Fisher, “Phased array feeds for low noise reflector antennas,” Tech. Rep. 307, NRAO, 1996.

[13] X.-D. Wu and K. Chang, “Compact wideband integrated active slot antenna amplifier,” Electronics Letters,
vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 496–497, 1993.

[14] W. Pickles, J. Rao, D. Patel, and R. Mital, “Coincident phase center ultra wideband array of dual polarized flared
notch elements,” in Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, 2007 IEEE, pp. 4421–4424,
2007.

[15] R. Sarkis and C. Craeye, “Circular phased array of wideband 3D Vivaldi antennas for radio astronomy,” in
International Workshop on Phased Array Antenna Systems for Radio Astronomy, (Provo, UT), Brigham Young
University, 2010.

[16] R. W. Kindt and W. R. Pickles, “Ultrawideband all-metal flared-notch array radiator,” Antennas and Propagation,
IEEE Transactions on, vol. 58, no. 11, pp. 3568–3575, 2010.

View publication stats