Quiet cellular antenna technology for Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

This website states that the area is radio quiet and legally protected.
http://www.ska.ac.za/

As I understand it, this whole area has been legislated as being "radio quiet". My understanding of that concept is that a piece of legislation was tabled in Parliament, debated and eventually signed into law prohibiting all wireless communications within a specific radius of the SKA.

I stand corrected on this. As I said, this is what I understand "radio quiet" to mean.

So, if this area is radio quiet and there are no cellphones, no wireless internet, no VHF, UHF or HF radios, what's the point of a special cellular antenna? It's banned.
 
portcullis said:
This website states that the area is radio quiet and legally protected.
http://www.ska.ac.za/

As I understand it, this whole area has been legislated as being "radio quiet". My understanding of that concept is that a piece of legislation was tabled in Parliament, debated and eventually signed into law prohibiting all wireless communications within a specific radius of the SKA.

I stand corrected on this. As I said, this is what I understand "radio quiet" to mean.

So, if this area is radio quiet and there are no cellphones, no wireless internet, no VHF, UHF or HF radios, what's the point of a special cellular antenna? It's banned.
Click to expand...
I think the point is to replace the existing antennas on the outskirts of the SKA site with the new ones, to further reduce the radio noise. Remember that the SKA equipment will be extremely sensitive and even though there may not be cellular or other radio communication within the SKA site, they will still pick up unwanted signals originating outside of the area.
 
portcullis said:
This website states that the area is radio quiet and legally protected.
http://www.ska.ac.za/
Click to expand...

From what I read from that link...
Low levels of radio frequency interference and certainty of future radio quiet zone
Click to expand...

So currently it has low levels of radio frequency interference and in future it could become a radio quiet zone... no need for it to be a radio quiet zone just yet.
 
T3rminator said:
Patent it NOW!
Click to expand...

As per the article, they did patent it.

Gordon and Paul also received the Vodacom CEO award for this work.

Nice to see engineers still get time to do ground-breaking research while holding down a hectic daytime job at Vodacom.

Well done to them!
 
Great job guys! Glad to see they were clever and patented it quickly :)
We have to get SKA now! :D
 
iceblue said:
I think the point is to replace the existing antennas on the outskirts of the SKA site with the new ones, to further reduce the radio noise. Remember that the SKA equipment will be extremely sensitive and even though there may not be cellular or other radio communication within the SKA site, they will still pick up unwanted signals originating outside of the area.
Click to expand...

The sensitivity on those radio telescopes is pretty close to the theoretical limits. The horn antennae on the dishes operate at 15 K for example, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had a noise floor PSD of less than -160 dBm/Hz. Those dishes in other words will pick up what your standard spectrum analyzers could never even dream of.

manbearpig said:
ENGINEERS. NOT SCIENTISTS.
Click to expand...

LOL, just like people think that developers are engineers. The proletariat does not know the difference.
 
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