A structured approach to an optimized SKA station configuration

Abstract

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope will be the largest radio telescope ever built to date. Antenna placement for such a telescope is critical, as apart from affecting the cost of the physical architecture, it also affects the accuracy of the data obtained. This project deals with antenna placement within an SKA station, consisting of an array of antennas. The aim of this project is to devise a framework which constructively generates an antenna array from a given histogram of baseline between antennas, versus allowing algorithms to either generate random arrays or generate arrays using metaheuristic techniques. This aim was successfully reached, but the arrays didn't prove to be superior to arrays generated by the usual methods. Finally it was concluded that other factors apart from the distance between antennas influence the effectiveness of the imaging equipment when building an array. Further investigation is required to identify these factors and improve the framework.