2021 15th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), 2021
The sensitivity of a single station is a crucial performance characteristic of the low-frequency ... more The sensitivity of a single station is a crucial performance characteristic of the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low). In this contribution, the sensitivity of a prototype station of the SKA-Low, the Aperture Array Verification System Version 2 (AAVS2), measured at frequencies 70.3, 110.2, 159.4, 229.7 and 320.3MHz is presented and compared with electromagnetic simulations. The measured sensitivity data are in good agreement with the predictions of electromagnetic simulations, confirming good understanding of the instrument and its accurate representation in the simulations.
2016 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), 2016
A UAV-mounted radio-frequency transmitter is proposed as a known reference field source to perfor... more A UAV-mounted radio-frequency transmitter is proposed as a known reference field source to perform a set of functional tests on aperture arrays. The experimental results obtained on complete prototypes (end-to-end) and sub-assemblies provide good confidence on both amplitude and timing verification.
The signal processing firmware that has been developed for the Low Frequency Aperture Array compo... more The signal processing firmware that has been developed for the Low Frequency Aperture Array component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is described. The firmware is implemented on a dual FPGA board, that is capable of processing the streams from 16 dual polarization antennas. Data processing includes channelization of the sampled data for each antenna, correction for instrumental response and for geometric delays and formation of one or more beams by combining the aligned streams. The channelizer uses an oversampling polyphase filterbank architecture, allowing a frequency continuous processing of the input signal without discontinuities between spectral channels. Each board processes the streams from 16 antennas, as part of larger beamforming system, linked by standard Ethernet interconnections. These are envisaged to be 8192 of these signal processing platforms in the first phase of the SKA so particular attention has been devoted to ensure the design is low cost and low power.
The number of manmade objects orbiting the Earth has dramatically increased during the last decad... more The number of manmade objects orbiting the Earth has dramatically increased during the last decades, posing a serious risk for space-based activities. Consequently, an international effort is being devoted to 1 Paper ID: 53432 student improving the performance of optical and radar sensors for space objects monitoring. This work presents the results of observation campaigns performed using the Italian bistatic radar sensor BIRALES (BIstatic RAdar for LEo Survey). BIRALES sensor is composed by the Radio Frequency Transmitter (RFT) of the Italian Joint Test Range of Salto di Quirra in Sardinia (Italy) and part of the Northern Cross (NC) radiotelescope located in Medicina (Bologna, Italy) as multibeam receiver. The RFT consists of a 7 meters parabolic antenna equipped with an RF transmitter able to radiate a 10 kW power in the 410-415 MHz band. The NC is made of two perpendicular arms: the East-West arm is a 564 m long cylindrical-parabolic reflector antenna, whereas the North-South arm...
Near-Earth space has become progressively more crowded in active satellites, inactive spacecraft ... more Near-Earth space has become progressively more crowded in active satellites, inactive spacecraft and debris. Consequently, an international effort is currently being devoted to improving the performance of the network of optical and radar sensors for space objects monitoring. Within this framework, the use of the novel bistatic radar sensor BIRALES is investigated in this work, which makes use of a multibeam receiver. The tailored orbit determination algorithm is described, which receives as input the data processed by the acquisition system, that digitally assembles measured radar echoes. The performances of the orbit determination process are assessed on a set of numerical simulations carried out on the NORAD catalogue, using a dedicated simulator of the sensor.
2015 1st URSI Atlantic Radio Science Conference (URSI AT-RASC), 2015
The National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) is deeply involved in the designing phase of the L... more The National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) is deeply involved in the designing phase of the Low Frequency Aperture Array (LFAA) of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). In particular, the technological contributions of INAF are basically spread in three main areas: (i) antenna and array pattern characterization and calibration, (ii) analog and photonic receiver design, and (iii) development of digital back-ends FPGA-based.
... A description of the PFS may be found in the paper by Formisano et al. (2005) and Grassi et a... more ... A description of the PFS may be found in the paper by Formisano et al. (2005) and Grassi et al. (2005a), where the observational details can be found. One may find detailed investigations of the errors of the retrieval procedure in Grassi et al. (2005a). ...
This paper illustrates the Italian BIstatic RAdar for LEo Survey (BIRALES) sensor for Space Surve... more This paper illustrates the Italian BIstatic RAdar for LEo Survey (BIRALES) sensor for Space Surveillance and Tracking in the LEO regime. BIRALES is a bistatic radar whose receiving part has been refurbished to synthetize up to 32 simultaneous beams in the antenna field of view. The multibeam configuration offers the possibility of estimating the track of the detected objects inside the receiver field of view by analysing the beams illumination sequence. The estimated track is then coupled with the available Doppler shift and slant range measurements. The availability of such a plethora of information is then exploited to perform initial orbit determination with a single passage of a resident space object inside the sensor field of view. This work describes BIRALES sensor setup and operation, showing the performance of the sensor in terms of observation and tracking capabilities.
The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) for the Mars Express mission is optimised for atmospheri... more The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) for the Mars Express mission is optimised for atmospheric studies, covering the IR range of 1.2-45 mum in two channels. The apodised spectral resolution is 2 cm-1, while the sampling is 1 cm-1. The FOV is about 2° for the short wavelength (SW) channel and 4° for the long wavelength (LW) channel, corresponding to spatial
The SKA LOW telescope is an interferometer composed of 512 stations. Each station consists of 256... more The SKA LOW telescope is an interferometer composed of 512 stations. Each station consists of 256 electronically steered antennas. The Low Frequency Aperture Array is the portion of the SKA-LOW telescope including the antennas and the related electronics. The LFAA signal processing chain amplifies, transports and combines the signals from the antennas composing each station into a coherent beam. Beamforming is performed in the frequency domain, with stringent requirements on bandpass flatness, linearity in a RFI contaminated spectral region, and allowed signal degradation. We adopted an architecture including a highly optimized oversampled polyphase filterbank for channelization, and a distributed network beamformer. The system has been validated as part of the Aperture Array Verification System, a single station operating at the SKA site in Western Australia.
Express are reviewed. An average global spectrum ranging from 200 cm to 8200 cm is compared with ... more Express are reviewed. An average global spectrum ranging from 200 cm to 8200 cm is compared with the Martian spectrum from the Short Wavelength Spectrometer of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), and with the global synthetic spectrum computed using only the gases CO2, CO and H2O. PFS is able to measure the vertical temperature-pressure profile in the atmosphere and the temperature of the soil simultaneously with the dust and water-ice opacity. The short-wavelength channel shows the major CO2 bands at 4.3 μm and 2.7 μm. The bottom of the first band shows very clearly the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium emission of the high atmospheric CO2 gas, while the limb measurements show CO emission. All the isotopic CO2 molecules appear to be emitting at the same radiance level, implying strong energy pumping from the most abundant to the less abundant molecules. In one of the first passes over Olympus Mons, the temperature field shows abnormal adiabatic cooling in the atmosphere above t...
The Sardinia Aperture Array Demonstrator (SAD) is an Italian project aimed at developing new tech... more The Sardinia Aperture Array Demonstrator (SAD) is an Italian project aimed at developing new technology in the area of Low-Frequency Aperture Arrays (LFAAs). The final objective of SAD is to test technologies and demonstrate concepts for a possible application in the LFAA instrument of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). In LFAA, the electronically steered beam produced by a large number of antenna elements makes the digital signal processing extremely challenging. In this framework, the electromagnetic aspects of these large arrays are significant and an accurate analysis is mandatory. For instance in SAD, a lot of efforts have been addressed to design the antenna, to analyse its electromagnetic performance, to measure the antenna patterns by using an aerial artificial probe, to analyse the array behaviour and to set up an automatic procedure for monitoring the radio spectrum at the site. All these aspects are discussed in this article
In radio astronomy Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is largely used for the implem... more In radio astronomy Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is largely used for the implementation of digital signal processing techniques applied to antenna arrays. This is mainly due to the good trade-off among computing resources, power consumption and cost offered by FPGA chip compared to other technologies like ASIC, GPU and CPU. In the last years several digital backend systems based on such devices have been developed at the Medicina radio astronomical station (INAF-IRA, Bologna, Italy). Instruments like FX correlator, direct imager, beamformer, multi-beam system have been successfully designed and realized on CASPER (Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research, https://casper.berkeley.edu) processing boards. In this paper we present the gained experience in this kind of applications.
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
We present the first Southern-Hemisphere all-sky imager and radio-transient monitoring system imp... more We present the first Southern-Hemisphere all-sky imager and radio-transient monitoring system implemented on two prototype stations of the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low). Since its deployment, the system has been used for real-time monitoring of the recorded commissioning data. Additionally, a transient searching algorithm has been executed on the resulting all-sky images. It uses a difference imaging technique to enable identification of a wide variety of transient classes, ranging from human-made radio-frequency interference to genuine astrophysical events. Observations at the frequency 159.375 MHz and higher in a single coarse channel ( $\approx$ 0.926 MHz) were made with 2 s time resolution, and multiple nights were analysed generating thousands of images. Despite having modest sensitivity ( $\sim$ few Jy beam–1), using a single coarse channel and 2-s imaging, the system was able to detect multiple bright transients from PSR B0950+08, proving tha...
2021 15th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), 2021
The sensitivity of a single station is a crucial performance characteristic of the low-frequency ... more The sensitivity of a single station is a crucial performance characteristic of the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low). In this contribution, the sensitivity of a prototype station of the SKA-Low, the Aperture Array Verification System Version 2 (AAVS2), measured at frequencies 70.3, 110.2, 159.4, 229.7 and 320.3MHz is presented and compared with electromagnetic simulations. The measured sensitivity data are in good agreement with the predictions of electromagnetic simulations, confirming good understanding of the instrument and its accurate representation in the simulations.
2016 International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), 2016
A UAV-mounted radio-frequency transmitter is proposed as a known reference field source to perfor... more A UAV-mounted radio-frequency transmitter is proposed as a known reference field source to perform a set of functional tests on aperture arrays. The experimental results obtained on complete prototypes (end-to-end) and sub-assemblies provide good confidence on both amplitude and timing verification.
The signal processing firmware that has been developed for the Low Frequency Aperture Array compo... more The signal processing firmware that has been developed for the Low Frequency Aperture Array component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is described. The firmware is implemented on a dual FPGA board, that is capable of processing the streams from 16 dual polarization antennas. Data processing includes channelization of the sampled data for each antenna, correction for instrumental response and for geometric delays and formation of one or more beams by combining the aligned streams. The channelizer uses an oversampling polyphase filterbank architecture, allowing a frequency continuous processing of the input signal without discontinuities between spectral channels. Each board processes the streams from 16 antennas, as part of larger beamforming system, linked by standard Ethernet interconnections. These are envisaged to be 8192 of these signal processing platforms in the first phase of the SKA so particular attention has been devoted to ensure the design is low cost and low power.
The number of manmade objects orbiting the Earth has dramatically increased during the last decad... more The number of manmade objects orbiting the Earth has dramatically increased during the last decades, posing a serious risk for space-based activities. Consequently, an international effort is being devoted to 1 Paper ID: 53432 student improving the performance of optical and radar sensors for space objects monitoring. This work presents the results of observation campaigns performed using the Italian bistatic radar sensor BIRALES (BIstatic RAdar for LEo Survey). BIRALES sensor is composed by the Radio Frequency Transmitter (RFT) of the Italian Joint Test Range of Salto di Quirra in Sardinia (Italy) and part of the Northern Cross (NC) radiotelescope located in Medicina (Bologna, Italy) as multibeam receiver. The RFT consists of a 7 meters parabolic antenna equipped with an RF transmitter able to radiate a 10 kW power in the 410-415 MHz band. The NC is made of two perpendicular arms: the East-West arm is a 564 m long cylindrical-parabolic reflector antenna, whereas the North-South arm...
Near-Earth space has become progressively more crowded in active satellites, inactive spacecraft ... more Near-Earth space has become progressively more crowded in active satellites, inactive spacecraft and debris. Consequently, an international effort is currently being devoted to improving the performance of the network of optical and radar sensors for space objects monitoring. Within this framework, the use of the novel bistatic radar sensor BIRALES is investigated in this work, which makes use of a multibeam receiver. The tailored orbit determination algorithm is described, which receives as input the data processed by the acquisition system, that digitally assembles measured radar echoes. The performances of the orbit determination process are assessed on a set of numerical simulations carried out on the NORAD catalogue, using a dedicated simulator of the sensor.
2015 1st URSI Atlantic Radio Science Conference (URSI AT-RASC), 2015
The National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) is deeply involved in the designing phase of the L... more The National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) is deeply involved in the designing phase of the Low Frequency Aperture Array (LFAA) of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). In particular, the technological contributions of INAF are basically spread in three main areas: (i) antenna and array pattern characterization and calibration, (ii) analog and photonic receiver design, and (iii) development of digital back-ends FPGA-based.
... A description of the PFS may be found in the paper by Formisano et al. (2005) and Grassi et a... more ... A description of the PFS may be found in the paper by Formisano et al. (2005) and Grassi et al. (2005a), where the observational details can be found. One may find detailed investigations of the errors of the retrieval procedure in Grassi et al. (2005a). ...
This paper illustrates the Italian BIstatic RAdar for LEo Survey (BIRALES) sensor for Space Surve... more This paper illustrates the Italian BIstatic RAdar for LEo Survey (BIRALES) sensor for Space Surveillance and Tracking in the LEO regime. BIRALES is a bistatic radar whose receiving part has been refurbished to synthetize up to 32 simultaneous beams in the antenna field of view. The multibeam configuration offers the possibility of estimating the track of the detected objects inside the receiver field of view by analysing the beams illumination sequence. The estimated track is then coupled with the available Doppler shift and slant range measurements. The availability of such a plethora of information is then exploited to perform initial orbit determination with a single passage of a resident space object inside the sensor field of view. This work describes BIRALES sensor setup and operation, showing the performance of the sensor in terms of observation and tracking capabilities.
The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) for the Mars Express mission is optimised for atmospheri... more The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) for the Mars Express mission is optimised for atmospheric studies, covering the IR range of 1.2-45 mum in two channels. The apodised spectral resolution is 2 cm-1, while the sampling is 1 cm-1. The FOV is about 2° for the short wavelength (SW) channel and 4° for the long wavelength (LW) channel, corresponding to spatial
The SKA LOW telescope is an interferometer composed of 512 stations. Each station consists of 256... more The SKA LOW telescope is an interferometer composed of 512 stations. Each station consists of 256 electronically steered antennas. The Low Frequency Aperture Array is the portion of the SKA-LOW telescope including the antennas and the related electronics. The LFAA signal processing chain amplifies, transports and combines the signals from the antennas composing each station into a coherent beam. Beamforming is performed in the frequency domain, with stringent requirements on bandpass flatness, linearity in a RFI contaminated spectral region, and allowed signal degradation. We adopted an architecture including a highly optimized oversampled polyphase filterbank for channelization, and a distributed network beamformer. The system has been validated as part of the Aperture Array Verification System, a single station operating at the SKA site in Western Australia.
Express are reviewed. An average global spectrum ranging from 200 cm to 8200 cm is compared with ... more Express are reviewed. An average global spectrum ranging from 200 cm to 8200 cm is compared with the Martian spectrum from the Short Wavelength Spectrometer of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), and with the global synthetic spectrum computed using only the gases CO2, CO and H2O. PFS is able to measure the vertical temperature-pressure profile in the atmosphere and the temperature of the soil simultaneously with the dust and water-ice opacity. The short-wavelength channel shows the major CO2 bands at 4.3 μm and 2.7 μm. The bottom of the first band shows very clearly the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium emission of the high atmospheric CO2 gas, while the limb measurements show CO emission. All the isotopic CO2 molecules appear to be emitting at the same radiance level, implying strong energy pumping from the most abundant to the less abundant molecules. In one of the first passes over Olympus Mons, the temperature field shows abnormal adiabatic cooling in the atmosphere above t...
The Sardinia Aperture Array Demonstrator (SAD) is an Italian project aimed at developing new tech... more The Sardinia Aperture Array Demonstrator (SAD) is an Italian project aimed at developing new technology in the area of Low-Frequency Aperture Arrays (LFAAs). The final objective of SAD is to test technologies and demonstrate concepts for a possible application in the LFAA instrument of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). In LFAA, the electronically steered beam produced by a large number of antenna elements makes the digital signal processing extremely challenging. In this framework, the electromagnetic aspects of these large arrays are significant and an accurate analysis is mandatory. For instance in SAD, a lot of efforts have been addressed to design the antenna, to analyse its electromagnetic performance, to measure the antenna patterns by using an aerial artificial probe, to analyse the array behaviour and to set up an automatic procedure for monitoring the radio spectrum at the site. All these aspects are discussed in this article
In radio astronomy Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is largely used for the implem... more In radio astronomy Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology is largely used for the implementation of digital signal processing techniques applied to antenna arrays. This is mainly due to the good trade-off among computing resources, power consumption and cost offered by FPGA chip compared to other technologies like ASIC, GPU and CPU. In the last years several digital backend systems based on such devices have been developed at the Medicina radio astronomical station (INAF-IRA, Bologna, Italy). Instruments like FX correlator, direct imager, beamformer, multi-beam system have been successfully designed and realized on CASPER (Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research, https://casper.berkeley.edu) processing boards. In this paper we present the gained experience in this kind of applications.
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
We present the first Southern-Hemisphere all-sky imager and radio-transient monitoring system imp... more We present the first Southern-Hemisphere all-sky imager and radio-transient monitoring system implemented on two prototype stations of the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low). Since its deployment, the system has been used for real-time monitoring of the recorded commissioning data. Additionally, a transient searching algorithm has been executed on the resulting all-sky images. It uses a difference imaging technique to enable identification of a wide variety of transient classes, ranging from human-made radio-frequency interference to genuine astrophysical events. Observations at the frequency 159.375 MHz and higher in a single coarse channel ( $\approx$ 0.926 MHz) were made with 2 s time resolution, and multiple nights were analysed generating thousands of images. Despite having modest sensitivity ( $\sim$ few Jy beam–1), using a single coarse channel and 2-s imaging, the system was able to detect multiple bright transients from PSR B0950+08, proving tha...
Uploads
Papers by A. Mattana