Metasurfaced-enhanced phased-array feeds for radio telescopes

Astronomical observations have helped us verify many theories on the history of the Universe, however, there are still questions to be answered, for instance regarding the formation of the first galaxies. To aid our understanding of the Universe, radio telescopes can be used.

These telescopes are designed to receive weak radio frequency emissions from matter in the Universe.Many radio telescopes are based on reflector antennas, where the reflector focuses the weak emission onto a receiver at the reflector’s focal point.

The high directivity of the antenna is needed to detect the weak signal, but it implies that the antenna only monitors a small sector of the sky. To image the full sky, the reflector can be moved, but this is time-consuming with large overheads. To speed up the acquisition time, an array of receivers can be placed around the reflector focus.

However, the design of the receiver array is challenging and costly, and the imaging properties are limited by its implementation.In this project, metasurfaces are investigated for enhancing the performance of the receivers while alleviating the implementation and cost constraints.

The metasurfaces will enable new operation modes of radio telescopes, for instance allowing for electronic switching of the area of the sky that is surveyed, mitigating the overheads associated with mechanical repositioning of the antennas. The metasurfaces are aimed for future radio telescopes that will answer open questions about our Universe.