Integrated Circuit for Radio Astronomy Correlators Supporting Large Arrays of Antennas

Radio telescopes that employ arrays of many antennas are in operation, and ever-larger ones are being designed and proposed. Signals from the antennas are combined by cross-correlation. While the cost of most components of the telescope is proportional to the number of antennas, N, the cost and power consumption of cross-correlation are proportional to N2, and dominate at sufficiently large N. As radio telescopes get larger, there is a need to provide digital-signal-processing electronics that are smaller and less power-hungry than would be implied by the extrapolation of existing designs.