ANSI: Standards Aid in Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

December 11, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

Each antenna has a diameter of just 20 feet, but used together as one large dish, the full array of 350 will be able to rapidly survey the entire sky in less than 24 hours.

Experts said the array's potential capabilities aren't its only remarkable feature. Typically, radio telescopes are custom-built at significant cost.

In contrast, the 42 completed antennas at the Allen Telescope Array were fabricated from molds, and make use of inexpensive telecommunications technologies.

The array's design incorporates many new technologies, including low noise, wide band amplifiers that make such broad sky surveys possible.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard IEEE 111-2000 - Standard for Wide Band (Greater than One Decade) Transformers will guide scientists in the application and testing of the amplified signals.

Optical fiber cables bring the signals received by the array to astronomers in the processing room. An American national standard from the Insulated Cable Engineers Association (ICEA) provides guidelines on these cables, which need to be both durable and flexible. ANSI/ICEA S-87-640-2006 - Optical Fiber Outside Plant Communications Cable details performance requirements and testing methods, as well as cable and component assembly.

Over the next 20 years, the new array is expected to produce 1,000 times more data than has been gathered in the past 45 years. These signals from space are not only used for the SETI project; they also allow scientists to better understand astronomical bodies and events that were previously beyond their reach.

Source: American National Standards Institute (ANSI).