Square Kilometre Array program

The last few months have been enormously productive for the SKA group in that many previously loose concepts have been consolidated into comprehensive reports for the international Engineering and Management Team (EMT). Two concept outlines, giving "end-to-end" telescope descriptions, have been submitted under the auspices of the Australian SKA Consortium Committee. These documents, dealing with the Luneburg lens and the cylindrical reflector "strawmen" proposals, will be available shortly via the web (www.skatelescope.org). They, and other concept descriptions, will be discussed at the Groningen SKA meeting in August. A first-round review will be made and recommendations formulated for continuing, and possibly joint international, development projects.

While the bulk of the activity has been directed to the concept descriptions, virtually all of the thinking involved will be applied to the design of SKA demonstrators, including the CSIRO New Technology Demonstrator to be constructed in the MNRF2001 program. Armed with new insights into key areas of antenna, RF, signal transmission and signal processing engineering - as well as more thoughts on matching science and engineering - we will shortly produce a much more detailed demonstrator outline.

In technical developments, we have taken delivery of a 64-element Vivaldi slot phased array antenna; this will be tested and used in conjunction with the prototype 0.9-m Luneburg lens. This work is a collaboration between ASTRON (Netherlands), CTIP and ATNF. The design of a first-round low-noise amplifier MMIC has also been finalised. This is a GaAs device covering the range <1.5 GHz - 5 GHz and will be available for testing late this year. With much expertise now established, continuing devlopment in this area includes a wideband SiGe device.

In other work, the SEARFE outreach project is progressing well and is described elsewhere in this issue. A number of SKA briefings have been held for Commonwealth Government departments and states' agencies. These meetings have concerned technology and other spin-off possibilities, together with the requirements for site testing and SKA hosting. With the retirement of Bruce Thomas, new arrangements for managing the CSIRO site project are being implemented and, in closing this report, I would like to record my thanks to Bruce for his invaluable contribution to the SKA community over the past few years. We all wish him a happy retirement.

Peter Hall
SKA Program Leader
(Peter.Hall@csiro.au)