12 GHz Radio-Holographic surface measurement of the RRI 10.4 m telescope

TL;DR

This paper presents radio holography measurements of the RRI 10.4 m telescope's surface deviations at 12 GHz, demonstrating a method to assess and improve its suitability for high-frequency observations.

Contribution

The study introduces a radio holography technique using satellite signals and commercial components to accurately map surface deviations of a large radio telescope.

Findings

Measured rms surface deviation of ~350 μm

Achieved measurement accuracy of ~50 μm

Demonstrated feasibility for high-frequency surface assessment

Abstract

A modern Q-band low noise amplifier (LNA) front-end is being fitted to the 10.4 m millimeter-wave telescope at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) to support observations in the 40-50 GHz frequency range. To assess the suitability of the surface for this purpose, we measured the deviations of the primary surface from an ideal paraboloid using radio holography. We used the 11.6996 GHz beacon signal from the GSAT3 satellite, a 1.2 m reference antenna, commercial Ku-band Low Noise Block Convereters (LNBC) as the receiver front-ends and a Stanford Research Systems (SRS) lock-in amplifier as the backend. The LNBCs had independent free-running first local oscillators (LO). Yet, we recovered the correlation by using a radiatively injected common tone that served as the second local oscillator. With this setup, we mapped the surface deviations on a 64 x 64 grid and measured an rms surface deviation of ~350 um with a measurement accuracy of ~50 um.