AAVP 2011:

Taking the AA programme into SKA Pre-Construction

12-16 December, 2011 - ASTRON, Dwingeloo

Rationale

The workshop will review the scientific aims and requirements leading to the AA-low and AA-mid specifications and implementations.  The requirements will be discussed from DRM to the AA related Sub-system requirements ready for moving to the Pre-Construction phase. There will be an initial two day technical workshop followed by two days of conference.

 

 

Background

The 2nd AAVP conference will be held near Dwingeloo, NL. It comes at a crucial time for the SKA and the AA developments. It also fits into the overall conference/workshop programme including:

  • SKA 2011 in Banff                   July 2011
  • AA-low Workshop in Perth        September 2011
  • WP2 meeting                         October 2011

This may also be the final AA conference before the end of PrepSKA and moving on into the Pre-construction phase.
The status of AAs at that time will be obtaining results from AAVS0, preparing for the AA-low SRR, scheduled for March 2012, considering the “final” DRM for SKA1.

 

 

Target activities

This Workshop is the last one in PrepSKA and before the AA-low  System Requirements review, SRR.
At this workshop we need to:

  1. Review the status and performance of the various AA-low and AA-mid sub-system developments
  2. Review results and any preliminary conclusions from the demonstrator systems AAVS0
  3. Consider and discuss the Phase 1 and Phase 2 DRMs with regard to aperture arrays
  4. Discuss the Systems requirements specifications for AA-low and AA-mid.
  5. Discuss and agree the high level scientific and technical proposals to be used in the SRR

 

 

Structure

There needs to be some technical workshops on major aspects of the AA e.g. elements, station array configuration, single/dual element arrays, deployment etc. Topic suggestions will be welcome.


The conclusions of the technical discussions and the potential implementations will be discussed in the conference referring in detail to the science requirements. This will bring the scientists and engineers together for a broad agreement on the direction of AA developments.


The DRMs for Phase 1 and Phase 2 SKA should have been agreed at the SKA level prior to this workshop. The implications to both AA-low and AA-mid will be considered and ideally agreed, this is the basis of the all AA system requirements specifications. Any commentary will inform the SKA at system level.


The engineers will review all the major specifications and to some extent the high-level design of the AAs, this may reveal further science opportunities.


We look forward to welcoming you in Dwingeloo!


On behalf of the AAVP MT


Arnold van Ardenne
Ilse van Bemmel
Truus van den Brink
Andre van Es
Andre Gunst