SKA preconstruction funding supplement

This grant provides additional funding as part of the SKA preconstruction development programme at Oxford. Two new areas are funded:

1) SKA1-Mid Band 3/4/5 feed package development. This is one of the three feed packages being developed for SKA1-Mid, the SKA dish array. Bands 3, 4 and 5 cover the frequencies from 1.65 GHz to 13.8 GHz. Under this funding we will develop the prototype feed package which includes the integration of the cryogenic cooling, feed horns, low noise amplifiers, RF gain chain and all relevant support equipment in to a complete package that will be tested on the prototype SKA dish antenna.

2) ProtoNIP - this is a computing system that will be used to validate the development work being done on searching for new pulsars with the SKA. The computing cluster will be attached to the SKA precursor instrument MeerKAT in South Africa, and will be used as a test-bed for the algorithms used to detect pulsars from the data stream produced by the telescope.

In addition, the grant will support all the researchers working at Oxford on SKA design and development for a period of 4 months, enabling continuation of the design consortia work towards the system critical design reviews.

Both areas of research covered by this grant will use equipment supplied by high-tech industry in the UK. Following on from the development work supported in this grant, the SKA organisation will procure the production versions of the receivers and computing systems. Having done the development in the UK makes it significantly more likely that these production contracts will be based in the UK.