An axi-symmetric segmented composite SKA dish design: Performance and production analysis

A concept of an axi-symmetric dish as antenna reflector for the next generation radio telescope - the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) - is presented. The reflector is based on the use of novel thermoplastic composite material (reinforced with carbon fibre) in the context of the telescope design with wide band single pixel feeds. The baseline of this design represents an array of 100's to 1000's reflector antennas of 15-m diameter and covers frequencies from <1 to 10 GHz. The purpose of our study is the analysis of the production cost of the dish and its performance in combination with a realistic wideband feed (such as the ‘Eleven Antenna’ feed) over a wide frequency band and a range of elevation angles. The presented initial simulation results indicate the potential of the proposed dish concept for low-cost and mass production and demonstrate sensitivity comparable to that of the presently considered off-set Gregorian reflector antenna with the same projected aperture area. We expect this observation to be independent of the choice of the feed, as several other single-pixel wideband feeds (that have been reported in the literature) have similar beamwidth and phase center location, both being rather constant with frequency.