Research of the active reflector antenna using laser angle metrology system

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel laser angle metrology system for active reflector antennas, enabling real-time surface shape detection and maintenance with micron precision, suitable for large millimeter/sub-millimeter radio telescopes.

Contribution

Introduces an efficient laser angle metrology system for active reflector antennas, demonstrating high precision and real-time surface shape control on a 65-meter radio telescope prototype.

Findings

Surface shape accuracy up to micron level

Real-time surface shape maintenance within minutes

Proven feasibility for sub-millimeter radio telescopes

Abstract

Active reflector is one of the key technologies for constructing large telescopes, especially for the millimeter/sub-millimeter radio telescopes. This article introduces a new efficient laser angle metrology system for the active reflector antenna of the large radio telescopes, with a plenty of active reflector experiments mainly about the detecting precisions and the maintaining of the surface shape in real time, on the 65-meter radio telescope prototype constructed by Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology (NIAOT). The test results indicate that the accuracy of the surface shape segmenting and maintaining is up to micron dimension, and the time-response can be of the order of minutes. Therefore, it is proved to be workable for the sub-millimeter radio telescopes.