Evaluation Engineering - 5

accelerometers, sensors, and
batteries in a fully coupled
mathematical framework.
LSTC counts a majority of
tier one automotive suppliers
among its customers. ANSYS
said the combined company's
strengths in simulation for
structures, f luids, electromagnetics, optics, safety, and
machine learning will deliver
a powerful solution for autonomous and electric vehicles
to global automotive manufacturers and their suppliers.

World's largest optical
lens shipped to SLAC
When the world's newest
telescope starts imaging
the southern sky in 2023, it
will take photos using optical assemblies designed by
Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL) researchers and built by lab industrial
partners.
A key feature of the camera's optical assemblies for
the Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope (LSST), under construction in northern Chile,
will be its three lenses, one of
which at 1.57 m in diameter is
believed to be the world's largest high-performance optical
lens ever fabricated.
The lens assembly, which
includes the lens dubbed L-1,
and its smaller companion
lens (L-2), at 1.2 meters in
diameter, was built over the
past five years by Boulder, CObased Ball Aerospace and its
subcontractor, Tucson-based
Arizona Optical Systems.
Mounted together in a carbon fiber structure, the two
lenses were shipped from
Tucson, arriving intact after
a 17-hour truck journey at the
SLAC National Accelerator
Laboratory in Menlo Park.
SLAC is managing the overall design and fabrication, as

LLNL engineer Vincent Riot
(left), who has worked on the
LSST for more than a decade,
and LLNL optical engineer Justin
Wolfe, the LSST camera optics
subsystems manager, stand
in front of the LSST main lens
assembly.
Farrin Abbott/SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory

well as the subcomponent
integration and final assembly of LSST's $168 million, 3,200-megapixel digital
camera, which is more than
90% complete and due to be
finished by early 2021. In addition to SLAC and LLNL,
the team building the camera includes an international
collaboration of universities and labs, including the
Paris-based Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique
and Brookhaven National
Laboratory.
Livermore's researchers
made essential contributions
to the optical design of LSST's
lenses and mirrors, the way
LSST will survey the sky, how
it compensates for atmospheric turbulence and gravity, and
more.
The 8.4-m LSST will take
digital images of the entire
visible southern sky every
few nights, revealing unprecedented details of the
universe and helping unravel
some of its greatest mysteries.
During a 10-year time frame,
LSST will detect about 20 billion galaxies-the first time a
telescope will observe more
galaxies than there are people
on Earth-and will create a
time-lapse "movie" of the sky.
This data will help researchers study the formation of
galaxies, track potentially
hazardous asteroids, observe
exploding stars, and better
understand the elusive dark
matter and dark energy, which

together make up 95 % of the
universe.
The telescope's camera-the
size of a small car and weighing more than three tons-
will capture full-sky images
at such high resolution that
it would take 1,500 high-definition television screens to
display just one picture.
Financial support for LSST
comes from the National
Science Foundation (NSF), the
U.S. Department of Energy's
Office of Science, and private
funding raised by the LSST
Corp. The NSF-funded LSST
Project Office for construction was established as an
operating center under management of the Association
of Universities for Research
in Astronomy. The DOEfunded effort to build the
LSST camera is managed by
the SLAC National Accelerator
Laboratory.
The camera system for LSST,
including the three lenses and
six filters designed by LLNL
researchers and built by lab
industrial partners, will be
shipped from SLAC to the telescope site in Chile in early 2021.

NI announces sub-THz
testbed for 6G research
NI has announced a real-time
sub-THz software-defined radio (SDR) for 6G research built
on NI's mmWave Transceiver
System (MTS) and radio heads
from Virginia Diodes (VDI).
Using VDI radio heads, the
frequency range of the MTS

can extend into the sub-THz
range. Because this testbed is
built using SDRs and FPGAs,
the software can be upgraded and customized to meet
a range of research needs
and applications. Users can
leverage existing software
reference designs for channel
sounding or wireless communications protocols to create
a real-time testbed for 6G
research.
The development cycle of
a typical wireless standard
is approximately 10 years.
As the commercial rollout of
5G begins in 2019, wireless
communications researchers

The NI mmWave Transceiver System
with VDI radio heads.

are already investigating the
technology and ideas that will
serve as the foundation of 6G.
The use of sub-THz and THz
frequencies has numerous applications for communications
and is likely to be a major area
of 6G research in the foreseeable future.
"Now that 5G is becoming
mainstream, communications research must move
deeper into the millimeter and
submillimeter-wave bands.
It seems D-Band is now the
new E-Band," said Gerhard
Schoenthal, COO, VDI.
"Researchers need access
to sub-THz testbeds to prototype multiple wireless use
cases. These testbeds must
be highly flexible but also offer
cutting-edge performance in
order to explore the boundaries of wireless performance at
these very high frequencies,"
said James Kimery, director of
wireless research, NI.

NOVEMBER 2019 EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

5
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Evaluation Engineering

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