Thursday, 19 October 2017
An optical fibre-based synchronisation system designed by UWA ICRAR researchers has been selected for the first phase of SKA-mid, the part of the Square Kilometre Array that will be built in South Africa.
The long distances between SKA antennas means radio waves from the sky will arrive at each antenna at different times. With thousands of antennas spread over continental scales, one of the most complex technical challenges for the SKA is to synchronise the incoming signals with extreme precision before they’re combined by the SKA’s supercomputers.