Speaker
Mr
Shukree Wassin
(NMMU)
Description
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be an interferometric, ultrasensitive radio astronomy instrument with an aperture array of one million square metres. The SKA telescope array will be coherently connected using optical fibre across an area of approximately 3000 km. A crucial and complex requirement for the SKA antenna is the coherent combination of the incoming astronomical data collected by the individual receptors remotely located. With recent progress and improvements made in atomic frequency standards, optical fibre is an attractive medium for stable and highly accurate timing and frequency transfer between a centralized location and multiple end-users. Precise and accurate clock tones will be distributed via optical fibre to the digitizers located on each antenna, thereby providing phase coherence within the telescopes array network. Natural temporal variations and external environmental conditions can affect the phase stability of the optical signal transmitted along the fibre. For this reason, an active fibre based time and frequency stabilization system is required. In this paper, a 22 km fibre round trip experiment described using a DBF phase correcting actuator. A 248.78 ps phase correction is applied to a 2 GHz clock signal at the transmitting end. Phase error correction to the distributed optical signal is achieved by exploiting the wavelength tunability of a distributed feedback (DFB) laser. Our proposed system has potential application in big data projects such as the Square Kliometre Array and various other frequency dissemination applications. Such systems can be employed into metro-access telecommunication networks.
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Tim Gibbon
Tim.Gibbon@nmmu.ac.za
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
No
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD, N/A)?
PhD
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
Yes
Primary author
Mr
Shukree Wassin
(NMMU)
Co-authors
Prof.
Andrew Leitch
(NMMU)
Mr
George Isoe
(Centre for Broadband Communication,Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University)
Dr
Romeo Reginald Gunther Gamatham
(NRF, Square Kilometre Array South Africa)
Dr
Timothy Gibbon
(NMMU Physics Department)
