RU Groningen Honours Master students at ASTRON

© Peter Maat and Roel Witvers

This summer, four students from the University of Groningen spent three weeks at ASTRON, doing their summer school project as part of their RUG Honours Master programme. The four students: Luuk Boulogne, Robert Bwana, Max den Uijl and Daniel Yimam designed, constructed and tested an antenna array with four antennas, operating in the 50 MHz to 350 MHz frequency band. They were placed at ASTRONs test field in Dwingeloo. Analog optical links were used for the transfer of the antenna signals to Huisje West, where the signals were processed.

The housing of the electronics, which was designed by the students, was printed using ASTRONs 3-D printer. The electronics were designed by Roel Witvers and assembled by the students. At the central location, Software-Defined Radio sticks and a computer were used as central processor. The processing software was generated by the students using the open source signal processing tool GNU Radio.

The pictures: soldering of the electronics (top/left), tweaking with the cables at Huisje West (bottom/left), roll-out (top/right), one of the four antennas at the ASTRON test field (bottom/right).