AMiBA Engineering Telecom Minutes
23, Aug. 2001

Chair: K.Y. Lo
Participants: J.Peterson, H. Wang (USA); W. Wilson, M.Sinclair, M. Kesteven (Sydney);
T.H. Chu, T.D.Chiueh, H.C. Lu, Y. J. Hwang, H.M. Jiang, W. Ho, Kos Lin, C. J. Ma, P. Shaw (Taipei)

Summary:

General

  1. We still need to maintain a telecom in every week, however the meeting length should be limited to one hour to discuss the important issue, concerning the whole group people to take part and to discuss.Follow up detailed discussions can go on offline; many things can be followed up by email. But that of course require discipline and focusing important issues at hand.
  2. We do have a large team, and have a lot of people involved. We should ask someone to be a coordinator for each key system, so for discussions offline there is a main person who could oversee the whole thing. For the correlator, Fred suggested Warwick to be the coordinate person for the correlator, including all related matters. All agreed on this suggestion.

Correlator

  1. As for testing the read-out chips,
    Warwick is still working on it, and trying faster than the 0.1-second read out time we need. We are aiming to finish this test in mid-Sep. Fred asked Paul to set up a offline phone meeting, then to review the result and discuss what to do to fix the problem, and perhaps at that time we might think about a little bit of what back up plan needed.
  2. A written confirmation on purchasing the 16-lag element correlator has been sent to Jeff, the official PO will be followed up shortly.

MMIC HEMT

  1. Tom Prince, the Chief Scientist of JPL,is favorable to collaborate with us and he is going to talk to the JPL international office. Hopefully in the end, we could go on and establish a formal collaboration with JPL.
  2. Huei will draft out a plan in detail about packaging and testing the MMIC HEMT chips, Bob and Mingtang will also work out a plan to set up a lab at Hilo. We will present these plans in the contract to TRW. Our aim is to work out this contract and bring it to TRW in early Sep.
  3. Huei will try to ask Todd whether he can loan us LNA for 4 more receivers.
  4. Jeff suggested to order some blocks to fit Sandy¦s design which has been used in JPL/UMass amplifiers, Paul will follow up to talk with Fred and Jeff.
  5. Neal Erickson has offered to supply a MMIC LNA, but Jeff has not received it,he will follow up to contact Neal.

Receiver

  1. Mal confirmed that AT would loan us one w-band amplifier for receiver. Jeff also agreed to offer one amplifier that he got from Neal Erickson; he will send it to Mal to test.
  2. Mal is trying to shorten the length of the noise coupler to fit in Mingtang¦s arrangement without disturbing too much. Once that design is settled, then will proceed to produce at the workshop outside AT. As to the transition, Mal will talk to Mingtang to get it resolved. Mal is going to retire from CSO in two weeks time, but he will stay involved in AMiBA.
  3. Leo has sent some figures of power budget calculation to Warwick, and according this calculation we need to purchase at least a dozen amplifiers. Each amplifier costs 3K and the lead-time is 90 days. Leo will contact another supplier to get quotation.

LO
As to upgrade the DRO to 21 GHz, T.H. is looking for the quotation of isolator, doublers and divider.
Fred thought we need to figure out how to prevent the future lack of coordination in between work packages.

Platform & mount
As for the prototype, we only need a simple mount. Mike will sketch out something and get a quote from Sydney Engineering. In the mean time, Jeff will provide Mike the information of the 80cm hexapod designed by a machine tool manufacturer. Fred made the point that at this point of the project; arrangements that assure delivering of sub-systems are necessary and important.

 

Action items:

  1. Huei will draft a plan in detail about packaging and testing the MMIC HEMT chips, Bob and Mingtang will also work out a plan to set up a lab at Hilo.We will put these plans together in the contract to TRW. Our aim is to work out this contract and bring it to TRW in early Sep.
  2. Paul will set up an offline meeting for Fred and Warwick to discuss the back-up plan of SiGe multiplier for correlator.
  3. Huei will try to ask Todd whether he can loan us 16 more amplifiers.
  4. Jeff suggested order some blocks to fit Sandy's design which has been used in JPL/UMass, Paul will follow up to talk with Fred and Jeff.
  5. Mal is trying to shorten the length of the noise coupler to fit in Mingtang's arrangement without disturbing too much. Once that design is settled, then will proceed to produce at the workshop outside AT. As to the transition, Mal will talk to Mingtang to get it resolved.

Next meeting:30.Aug.2001, 8:30AM Taipei time