The European SKA Design Study (SKADS) began with a kick-off meeting on November 18/19 2005 in the Chateau Limelette near Brussels. It was appropriate to choose this setting, so near Brussels and the European Commission for this pan-European effort. The EC funding is beginning to flow, and indeed the project formally started on July 1st 2005.

SKADS is a design study focussed on the development of phased arrays for the SKA. A major thrust of the study is a large aperture-plane array in the shape of the EMBRACE demonstrator. This follows on from ASTRON work with the "Thousand Element Array" and will use Vivaldi antennas in compact tiles. EMBRACE will comprise two arrays - a larger one (several hundred square metres) in Westerbork, and a smaller one in Nancay and linked to WSRT.

Complementing the EMBRACE activity is the UK-led 2-PAD dual polarisation all-digital phased array tile project. This aims to explore more ambitious technology but on a much smaller scale (1 square metre) than EMBRACE.

The BEST concept, involving the production of multiple beams on a large cylindrical concentrator, will be based in Medicina, Italy; it should produce useful results within the next two years.

The development of hardware demonstrators is an exciting part of the overreaching goal of SKADS: to fully study and design the concept of a "Fully Digital SKA". To this end, a number of Design Studies are focussing on requirements and the development of new technology. In parallel, scientific simulations are underway to better specify the capabilities necessary for SKA, and to ensure that a fully digital phased-array can undertake the SKA Key Science Projects.

The presentations at the kick-off meeting showed that everyone had not been waiting for a formal meeting to get started! There has already been progress All the presentations are available at the SKADS web site: http://www.skads-eu.org

ASTRON continues to play the central management role in SKADS under the coordination of Arnold van Ardenne. His management team has been augmented by two positions, with a third expected imminently. Andrew Faulkner from the University of Manchester (Jodrell Bank) is well known in the pulsar community. He brings his unique industry and radio-astronomy experience to the role as SKADS Project Engineer. Steve Torchinsky joins SKADS as the Project Scientist and will be based at the Paris Observatory, splitting his time between the Meudon and the Nancay sites. Steve was recently at the Arecibo Observatory where he was the Project Manager for ALFA, the Arecibo L-band Feed Array, and he was also the interim Head of Astronomy at Arecibo.

SKADS is overseen by a Board composed of representatives from each of the contributing partners. The first meeting of the SKADS Board was held in Zaandam near Amsterdam on January 26th, 2006. Peter Wilkinson agreed to take on the role as Chairman of the SKADS Board, to the great satisfaction of all present. The Board members were also very pleased to have Franco Mantovani, director of IRA-Bologna, take on the role as vice-chair. During this meeting, the SKADS Consortium Agreement was discussed and agreed in principle, and the positions of Project Engineer and Project Scientist were confirmed.

Steve Torchinsky
SKADS Project Scientist
2006 January 31