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  • Feasibility Study of a W-Ba...
    Navarrini, A.; Olmi, L.; Nesti, R.; Ortu, P.; Marongiu, P.; Orlati, A.; Scalambra, A.; Orfei, A.; Roda, J.; Cattani, A.; Leurini, S.; Govoni, F.; Murgia, M.; Carretti, E.; Fierro, D.; Pellizzoni, A.

    IEEE access, 2022, Letnik: 10
    Journal Article

    We report on the feasibility study of a W-band multibeam heterodyne receiver for the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), a general purpose fully steerable 64-m diameter antenna located on the Sardinia island, Italy, managed by INAF ("Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica," Italy). The W-band front-end is designed for the telescope Gregorian focal plane and will detect both continuum and molecular spectral lines from astronomical sources and radio emission from the Sun in the 3 mm atmospheric window. The goal specification of the receiver is a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">4\times 4 </tex-math></inline-formula> focal plane array operating in dual-linear polarization with a front-end consisting of feed-horns placed in cascade with waveguide Orthomode Transducers (OMTs) and LNAs (Low Noise Amplifiers) cryogenically cooled at <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\approx </tex-math></inline-formula>20 K. The instantaneous FoV (Field of View) of the telescope is limited by the shaping of the 64-m primary and 7.9-m secondary mirrors. The cryogenic modules are designed to fit in the usable area of the focal plane and provide high-quality beam patterns with high antenna efficiency across the 70 - 116 GHz Radio Frequency (RF) band. The FoV covered by the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">4\times 4 </tex-math></inline-formula> array is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">2.15\times 2.15 </tex-math></inline-formula> arcmin 2 , unfilled, with separation between contiguous elements of 43 arcsec. Dual-sideband separation (2SB) down-conversion mixers are designed to be placed at the cryostat output and arranged in four four-pixel down-conversion modules with 4 - 12 GHz Intermediate Frequency (IF) bands (both Upper Side Band and Lower Side Band selectable for any pixel and polarization). The receiver utilizes a mechanical derotator to track the parallactic angle.