Radio Astronomy Project
We are currently building a radio telescope at 1420 MHz, or 21cm, for
measurement of the Doppler shift of the hyperfine line of the ground
state in neutral hydrogen. The basic design is that of two 3 meter
diameter dishes, spaced roughly 30 meters apart, giving an angular
resolution of about 0.5 degrees. The site is a 40 acre parcel near
Atlantic Mine, Michigan, and is also the location of the Michigan
Technological University optical observatory.
View a site plot of the dish
location.
As part of the EE406 - Microwaves Devices and Circuits Class , it
was the students' project to design a receiver for this interferometer
system. The critical requirements of the receiver include high gain on the
order of 90 - 130 dB and low noise figures.
This document serves to describe the design issues, fabrication and the
layout of the radio telescope receiver and to present test results.
Possible extensions or improvements in the design will be presented should
future users wish to implement them.
The overall receiver consists of the following sections:
- A Front end receiver antenna and Low noise amplifier (LNA).
- An RF Section consisting of one stage of down-conversion from 1420 MHz
to 377.5 MHz and bandpass filters.
- A Local Oscillator (LO) and frequency multiplier unit.
- An IF section consisting of second stage of down-conversion from 377.5
MHz to 30 MHz followed by narrow-band filtering and post amplification.
View the postscript block diagram of
the entire receiver system.
The original design was conceived by Guillermo Acevedo, currently a
graduate student in EE in the electromagnetics option, along with Dr.
Richard Campbell who is currently at Trigaint Systems. The key personnel
involved include the project leader Aaron Koslowski, John Miller, Charles
Sannes, and the five design teams - Predrag Janic and David Rottier,
RF section; Robert Rokosky, Jr., IF filter
section; Alan Hollo and Balasubramanian Ramachandran, IF
section; Paul Stanowski, Cornelius Strong, and Mark Wagoner,
local oscillator section; and Brian Steward and Samuel Hon
Yin Vu, frequency multiplier section.
Click here to read the entire radio
astronomy receiver report.
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