The SKA low frequency aperture array

The deployment of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) [1] starts with a ~10% instrument, phase 1, commencing with construction in 2018. This includes the SKA1-Low, a sparse Aperture Array (AA) covering 50 to at least 350MHz. SKA1-Low will consist of 512 stations, each with 256 antennas creating a total of more than 130.000 antennas. The configuration will be closed packed with a large fraction of the antennas within a 1.7km radius central area and the remaining collecting area situated on three spiral arms, extending to a radius of ~45km.