For over 80 years, we’ve been on the cutting edge of radio-astronomy technology, continually developing system solutions for our telescopes, observatories and data archives.
We develop and demonstrate revolutionary technology on our telescopes in Australia, which is then replicated in facilities across the globe.
Alongside making astronomical discoveries, our telescopes are part of space missions from Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond, with our systems enabling spacecraft down-links and object tracking.
Complete end to end solutions, our team designs and builds highly sensitive, ultra-wide bandwidth systems for antennas, from analogue and digital processing through to data product, applicable where high signal purity and wide bandwidths are needed.
Radio signals from cosmic objects have very wide bandwidth and are generally 'noise-like' rather than repetitive. This makes them very different from the telecommunications signals that most off-the-shelf signal-processing systems are designed to handle, so radio telescopes need purpose-built signal processors.
Our specific areas of expertise include:
- design of end-to-end receiving systems for performance, operability, and maintainability
- antenna design and measurement
- electromagnetic design of components operating at high radio frequencies (microwave- and millimetre-wavelengths)
- fabrication of components to extremely high tolerances
- design of high-frequency integrated circuits
- measurement of the performance of integrated circuits at cryogenic temperatures
- understanding of the properties of surface coatings, specialised alloys, and gases used in cryogenic systems
- welding of stainless steel for vacuum chambers
- wide-band, multi-input analogue to digital converter systems.
We have a strong track record in creating innovative signal-processing systems for our own and other leading international telescopes.
Get in touch with your project requirements to see how we can work together.
Seeing more of the sky at once
The phased array feed receivers (PAFs) developed for our ASKAP radio telescope are an example of our revolutionary solutions engineering.
Most radio telescopes use receivers that can only see one piece of sky at a time. Our phased array technology enables more of the sky to be seen at once, speeding up observation processes and uncovering intergalactic phenomena that might otherwise remain hidden.
The 36 dishes of our ASKAP radio telescope are fitted with our advanced PAF technology. Each PAF is made up of 188 individual receivers, positioned in a chequerboard-like arrangement. Alongside the receivers are low-noise amplifiers, which greatly enhance the weak radio wave signals received. These components are housed in a water-tight case mounted at the focal point above each dish. Together with specialised digital systems developed for ASKAP, the PAFs create 36 separate (simultaneous) beams to give a field-of-view of 30 square degrees on the sky.
This pioneering technology makes ASKAP the fastest radio telescope in the world for surveying the sky, taking panoramic snapshots over 100 times the size of the full Moon. This was put to the test with the first Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey, where the sky was scanned across a record-breaking two weeks, documenting 3 million galaxies, one million of which were new to science.
The PAFs enabled ASKAP to be one of the leading telescopes in fast radio burst research and has led researchers to discover many new and strange stars, revealing more about the Universe than ever before.
For over 80 years, we’ve been on the cutting edge of radio-astronomy technology, continually developing system solutions for our telescopes, observatories and data archives.
We develop and demonstrate revolutionary technology on our telescopes in Australia, which is then replicated in facilities across the globe.
Alongside making astronomical discoveries, our telescopes are part of space missions from Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond, with our systems enabling spacecraft down-links and object tracking.
Complete end to end solutions, our team designs and builds highly sensitive, ultra-wide bandwidth systems for antennas, from analogue and digital processing through to data product, applicable where high signal purity and wide bandwidths are needed.
Radio signals from cosmic objects have very wide bandwidth and are generally 'noise-like' rather than repetitive. This makes them very different from the telecommunications signals that most off-the-shelf signal-processing systems are designed to handle, so radio telescopes need purpose-built signal processors.
Our specific areas of expertise include:
- design of end-to-end receiving systems for performance, operability, and maintainability
- antenna design and measurement
- electromagnetic design of components operating at high radio frequencies (microwave- and millimetre-wavelengths)
- fabrication of components to extremely high tolerances
- design of high-frequency integrated circuits
- measurement of the performance of integrated circuits at cryogenic temperatures
- understanding of the properties of surface coatings, specialised alloys, and gases used in cryogenic systems
- welding of stainless steel for vacuum chambers
- wide-band, multi-input analogue to digital converter systems.
We have a strong track record in creating innovative signal-processing systems for our own and other leading international telescopes.
Get in touch with your project requirements to see how we can work together.
Seeing more of the sky at once
The phased array feed receivers (PAFs) developed for our ASKAP radio telescope are an example of our revolutionary solutions engineering.
Most radio telescopes use receivers that can only see one piece of sky at a time. Our phased array technology enables more of the sky to be seen at once, speeding up observation processes and uncovering intergalactic phenomena that might otherwise remain hidden.
The 36 dishes of our ASKAP radio telescope are fitted with our advanced PAF technology. Each PAF is made up of 188 individual receivers, positioned in a chequerboard-like arrangement. Alongside the receivers are low-noise amplifiers, which greatly enhance the weak radio wave signals received. These components are housed in a water-tight case mounted at the focal point above each dish. Together with specialised digital systems developed for ASKAP, the PAFs create 36 separate (simultaneous) beams to give a field-of-view of 30 square degrees on the sky.
This pioneering technology makes ASKAP the fastest radio telescope in the world for surveying the sky, taking panoramic snapshots over 100 times the size of the full Moon. This was put to the test with the first Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey, where the sky was scanned across a record-breaking two weeks, documenting 3 million galaxies, one million of which were new to science.
The PAFs enabled ASKAP to be one of the leading telescopes in fast radio burst research and has led researchers to discover many new and strange stars, revealing more about the Universe than ever before.