EMILY CHUTTER
Recent Mechanical Engineering Graduate
In radio telescope design, fiber-optic cables are often used as a way to transfer radio frequencies (RF) away from the telescope’s receivers to its signal processors. Due to the high amount of electromagnetic interference emitted by signal processors, this practice is currently favored as it protects the collected signal from being distorted or changed in some way. However, using RF over fiber-optic cables is very expensive and requires large sites for the telescopes.
In this report, with special consideration towards the Square Kilometer Array telescope project, a multi-layered radio frequency shielding enclosure was designed as an alternative to transmitting radio frequencies over fiber-optic cables. This enclosure consisted of three 3.175mm-thick aluminum layers and was designed to achieve a minimum attenuation level of 150 dB.
Artist Rendition of Square Kilometer Array

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With only using the innermost layer, prototype achieved ~80 dB attenuation. Assuming the addition of the remaining two layers, the prototype RFI enclosure would provide double the EMI attenuation than that of a commercially available alternative.