Excellent AAVS1 LINFRA progress in Australia

© ICRAR/Curtin

The Local Infrastructure work package (LINFRA, lead: ICRAR/Curtin) of the SKA Low Frequency Aperture Array (LFAA) has been making impressive progress on several fronts. This daily image reports on the trunk fiberoptic cable installation.

As the AAVS1 system will use RF over Fibre (RFoF) technology, we need to make sure that the antennas are connected via a stable fibre link to the digitisers in the Central Processing Facility on the MRO site (which also holds the ASKAP and MWA processing racks)

As can be seen on the pictures, the route between the AAVS1 station locations and the CPF offers several challenges:

A run-in trench was dug outside the CPF compound to facilitate the introduction of the AAVS1 trunk fibre cables into the existing underground fibre routing infrastructure.

A conduit was installed under the main MRO access road to create a crossing point for the AAVS1 trunk fibre cables that are running from the AAVS1 site to the CPF.

The next step will be fibre deployment. Currently we are investigating whether a commercial contractor should be entrusted with this, or whether it is feasible for the local LINFRA team to do it themselves.