Australian researchers develop ultra-accurate synchronisation tech for the SKA

Last week, a team of Australian researchers successfully completed Astronomical Verification of a critical sub-system of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

The equipment was built in partnership with the SKA Signal and Data Transport (SaDT) consortium as a prototype for the telescope frequency synchronisation system, which is a system that allows the telescope to collect extremely sensitive data even though its individual antennas are separated by hundreds of kilometres.

The researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, The University of Western Australia School of Physics and CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science tested their prototype equipment at the CSIRO Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in Narrabri, NSW over a two-week period.

"We found that it performed between 10 and 100 times better than the requirement for the SKA," said lead designer Dr Sascha Schediwy from ICRAR-Physics at UWA.

Added by Flornes Yuen on 2016-07-05