Surface roughness estimation of a parabolic reflector

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to estimate the average surface deviation of a parabolic reflector using measured data, accounting for systematic errors, to improve the surface accuracy of large radio telescope reflectors.

Contribution

A novel measurement correction method for accurately estimating surface deviations of parabolic reflectors considering systematic errors.

Findings

Effective correction of measurement errors demonstrated

Improved surface deviation estimation accuracy

Application to a 30 m radio telescope surface

Abstract

Random surface deviations in a reflector antenna reduce the aperture efficiency. This communication presents a method for estimating the mean surface deviation of a parabolic reflector from a set of measured points. The proposed method takes into account systematic measurement errors, such as the offset between the origin of reference frame and the vertex of the surface, and the misalignment between the surface rotation axis and the measurement axis. The results will be applied to perform corrections to the surface of one of the 30 m diameter radiotelescopes at the Instituto Argentino de Radioastronom\'ia (IAR).