Integrated Photonics for Radio Telescopes

© Photos: ASTRON, Youtube movie: TU Eindhoven

In the SKA/LFAA telescope the signals that are received by its antennas are transferred directly to a central signal processor without any intermediate signal processing/data reduction steps. In the past years ASTRON has developed photonic transmitter/receiver technology for the fibre-optic transfer of these signals. Currently ASTRON is working on a further development of this electronic/photonic technology for future telescope systems. In this work attention is focused on the development of custom designed integrated photonic devices which are tested by ASTRON with the use of demonstrator systems like the MEMPHIS demonstrator tile that is displayed in the R&D hall (see picture below). For the fabrication of the custom designed Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) ASTRON makes use of fabrication facilities that are offered by e.g. the Joint European Platform for Photonic Integrated Components and Circuits (JePPIX, www.jeppix.eu). Some time ago a short movie was made by JePPIX (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPWgzw_3aog ) which explains their work and (at 1:17) the way that ASTRON contributes to the development of the emerging PIC fabrication infrastructure in the Netherlands.

The pictures show (left) the photonic demonstrator tile that was developed in the MEMPHIS framework (www.memphisplatform.nl) and (right) the InP and TriPleX PICs in the demonstrator system.