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Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium Case Study

USB Extension System Simplifies Radio Astronomy Antenna Restoration

Icron USB extender product plays an important role in Scientific Consortium’s solution to restore a 60 foot satellite dish antenna for use in radio astronomy research and education.

CHALLENGES

• USB connectivity of remote microwave digital receivers situated at the antenna focus of parabolic dish limited to 16 feet (5 meters)
• Avoid bit error rate amplification and reduce RF emissions

• USB Ranger 2101 extends high-speed USB 2.0 up to 330 feet (100 meters) over shielded Cat 5

Volunteers at the Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium (SBRAC) have been working to restore the D.S. Kennedy, a 60 foot (15 meter) parabolic dish with elevation-over-azimuth mount. Located at the Shirleys Bay government research campus in Ottawa, Ontario, this historic dish is owned by the Canadian Space Agency for use in radio astronomy research and educational outreach throughout Canada. Commissioned in 1960 to operate as a tracking station for earth-observing satellites and early Canadian experiments in communications, the dish was taken out of service in the early nineties, and has stayed dormant ever since.

Discovered in 1933 by Karl Jansky, a radio engineer at Bell Laboratories, radio astronomy has been responsible for many important discoveries including radio galaxies, pulsars, quasars and cosmic background radiation. Today, radio astronomy is used to study astronomical phenomena that are invisible to conventional optical telescopes.

The Situation
Since 2007, a group of volunteer engineers and scientists have begun to restore and update the Shirleys Bay government research campus. As part of this restoration project, SBRAC hoped to revive the D.S. Kennedy Dish antenna that has remained in a “stowed” position for over a decade. To revive this dormant parabolic dish, state-of-the-art Software Defined Radio (SDR) based astronomy receivers had to be placed at the focus of the dish.

Parabolic dish antennas are capable of receiving radio signals over a wide range of frequencies from celestial objects or spacecraft. They can be used to explore areas in space clouded by dust that cannot be seen by visible light and to study emissions from black holes that are usually surrounded by dust and other debris. By using the dish antenna to collect and focus signals in the radio part of the spectrum, SBRAC researchers are able to study astronomical objects that emit radiation at radio frequencies. These celestial radio signals emanate from hot bodies in space or from objects with strong magnetic fields. There are also a myriad of molecules in deep space that emit at precisely-defined wavelengths, so-called ‘line emissions’. Part of SBRAC’s dish upgrade includes receivers that are capable of observing many of these ‘line emissions’, including the extremely important hydrogen line at 21cm wavelength, and the OH+ lines near 18cm wavelength.

The SBRAC receiver upgrade located at the dish connects to the data collection and observation scheduling computer network on the observatory campus. The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network includes a Gateway computer connected to four Single Board Computers (SBC) used to monitor and control Low Noise Amplifiers, Motor, Position and Power Management on the antenna.

System Architecture

Click Here to Enlarge USB Extension of Satellite Microwave Receivers