IIT Indore Is Developing Radio Interferometer For A NASA Project

The Indian Institute of Technology at Indore (IIT-I) is developing a state-of-the-art radio interferometer that would operate at 20GHz frequency. The interferometer is a part of the radio telescope project being worked on at the institute for an international NASA project. One of the main aim of the project project will be to figure out the formation of the Universe. A radio interferometer is an array of radio antennas used for astronomical observations. It can be thought of as a telescope that has a large aperture of the size equal to maximum spacing between two antennas.

IIT-Indore has developed a digital spectrometer and is also designing a digital correlator to enable the interferometry. Professor Dr. SS Malu from the astrophysics department of the institute has developed a new design, which is now ready for deploying and testing.


The Interferometer, once developed, will be able to study the galaxies recently observed by the Australian Telescope Compact Array. One of the key areas where the institute wants to make a breakthrough is studying very large scale structures like clusters of galaxies - which cannot be comfortably studied by radio telescopes.

The interferometer will allow researchers to understand fluid dynamics under extreme conditions and also improve the communications technologies. The advanced prototype of the interferometer will be deployed at Ladakh. The project is witnessing contribution from faculty members as well as B.Tech undergraduate students.

Source: Radio interferometer to come up at IIT-I soon | Indore News - Times of India