LFAA

Low-Frequency Aperture Array

Low-Frequency Aperture Array

The “Low-Frequency Aperture Array” (LFAA) element is the set of antennas, on board amplifiers and local processing required for the Aperture Array telescope of the SKA. LFAA includes the design of the local station signal processing and hardware required to combine the antennas and the transport of antenna data to the station processing. The local monitoring & control including the software of the aperture array are included. LFAA includes the different types of stations necessary as defined by the baseline reference design.

”No moving parts are used in the LFAA, it being a true all-electronic telescope, based on stationary antennas and having a capability enabled by advanced signal processing and computing, the capacity of which grows with time“, says Professor Peter Hall, LFAA Consortium Project Scientist, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.

”The Low Frequency Aperture Array will explore the edge of the Universe where matter that everything is made of emerged out of the plasma of the Big Bang“, says Dr. Andrew Faulkner, LFAA Consortium Project Engineer, Cambridge University, UK.