Receiver Integration for Mid-Band Square Kilometer Array Demonstrator Applications

The international radio-astronomy community is proposing to build a telescope of unprecedented size in order to allow observation of the farthest reaches of space. This telescope is known as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), and will be built in one of two southern-hemisphere candidate locations; with the core located in either the West Australian desert, or the Northern Cape region of South Africa. In order to meet science goals, ambitious simultaneous requirements for mid-band SKA of wide RF tuning range, large instantaneous bandwidth, large Field of View (FoV) and large collecting area have been proposed. These pose significant technical challenges, not least of which is the number of receivers required to achieve the specifications.