Technology & Innovation
Founded in 1946, AUI has been at the forefront of technology and innovation for over 50 years. Since its inception, AUI has been leading the way in the design, construction, and operation of complex, cutting edge, user-oriented facilities, which carry out basic and applied research. The technologies developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory enabled scientific research leading to several Nobel Prizes and had wide applications at the frontier of numerous scientific disciplines. Through its management of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), AUI not only builds and operates the world’s forefront radio observatories, but advances the state of the art in radio science through the NRAO Technology Center and Central Development Laboratory. AUI, through its user facilities and technology advances has helped to create the knowledge and innovation workforce we need to be successful in the global economy and to encourage scientific awareness in the general public.
NRAO Science & Technology
HFET amplifier development. Radio astronomy receivers almost universally use cooled HFET (heterostructure field-effect transistor) amplifiers as their low-noise input amplifier. Engineers and scientists at the NRAO Central Development Laboratory (CDL) have worked on the development of these critical receiver components for many years and are largely responsible for their high performance and wide acceptance by the radio astronomy community. NRAO CDL has developed noise models of different HFETs at cryogenic temperatures, and the innovative design techniques developed by CDL engineers yield wideband amplifiers with the optimal noise performance across the band. The HFET amplifiers developed by the NRAO CDL are reliable, stable, and show state-of-the-art performance from 1 ? 118 GHz. At frequencies above 1 GHz, these transistors are made on indium phosphide (InP); at lower frequencies, transistors made on gallium arsenide (GaAs) show superior performance.
The CDL has produced hundreds of HFET amplifiers that range from low-frequency amplifiers (< 1 GHz) used in fundamental particle physics and magnetic-resonance imaging development to the highest attainable frequencies for cosmic microwave background experiments. Successful development by the CDL of an InP-based low-noise amplifier at 90 GHz, e.g., was crucial to the success of the Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe satellite (WMAP). The CDL developed and produced all 80 space-rated amplifiers covering the five WMAP bands, and these were the core technology that enabled this highly successful mission. Other astronomical telescope systems that employ CDL low-noise amplifiers include: the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI), the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI), the Very Small Array (VSA), the Berkeley Illinois Maryland Association Sunyaev Zeldovitch Array (BIMA SZA), the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA), and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA).
