Edge sensor based real-time calculation method for active panel position of QTT

Cong Si Wang, Yue Fei Yan*, Qian Xu, Na Wang, Yuan Peng Zheng, Pei Yuan Lian, Song Xue, Yan Wang, Yu Hu Duan, Yu Shi, Yu Jia

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

QiTai Telescope (QTT), the world's biggest full-steerable telescope, will be constructed in Xinjiang, China. Its extra high operating frequency (115 GHz) imposes strict requirements on the accuracy of the reflector, while its large aperture (110 m) increases the impact of antenna weight and environment on surface accuracy. However, the panels of reflector will deform under the influence of gravity and the environment. Therefore, to compensate for the performance degradation caused by this deformation, a technique called active surface adjustment has been proposed. The existing adjustment methods cannot detect the deformation caused by environment of the reflector surface in real time, which can result in a delay in the compensation. Consequently, it is difficult to achieve an optimal compensating result. To solve this problem, a real-time method to estimate the large-aperture reflector antenna surface by calculating the antenna panel position based on edge sensors is proposed in this paper. In the proposed method, a panel coordinate transfer matrix has been formulated and the data measured from these edge sensors can then be treated as input for the proposed transfer matrix to calculate the actual position of the antenna panel in real time. A numerical simulation has been carried out in the QTT model and the results obtained show that the proposed real-time method is a promising tool to estimate the large reflector surface position in real time. It is believed that this active surface adjustment method has laid the foundation for new methods that will be developed to compensate for the reflector electrical performance.

Original languageEnglish
Article number182
JournalResearch in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Volume20
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 National Astronomical Observatories, CAS and IOP Publishing Ltd..

Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Instrumentation
  • Miscellaneous-methods
  • Miscellaneous-telescopes

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