An Innovative Low Cost Antenna Dish Built with CommercialOff-the-shelf (COTS) Components

摘要

The key factor, which influences the size of future radio aperture synthesis telescope projects, is the cost of the antenna dish. Lower antenna dish cost will allow more antennas to be built, providing more baselines and improving the telescope sensitivity and image quality. In this paper, various methods of lowering the dish structure cost, including using pre-stressed beam members, are discussed and, finally, an innovative low cost small antenna dish is proposed which relies mostly on commercial off-the-shelf components.