Speaker
Description
The MeerKAT radio telescope currently has UHF, L & S-Band Receivers and Digitisers installed. Although X-Band was fully provisioned for, this band was never developed as part of the MeerKAT project. The Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) secured funding and contracted the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) to design, develop and produce a high frequency Digitiser for MeerKAT. This Digitiser is based on the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO) Band 5B Receiver. Building on the success and legacy of the MeerKAT Digitiser, the SARAO Receivers Team are developing a new generation Digitisation Engine. The system level design, CASPER toolflow implementation and performance achieved will be presented. Looking beyond the scope of MeerKAT and MeerKAT+, other collaborations, possible deployments and applications will also be discussed.
