Radio Telescopes for the New Millennium

Description

Since the start of the millennium, radio astronomy has been experiencing a golden age. Several highly capable new telescopes have been commissioned; legacy radio telescopes are being continuously upgraded to enhance their performance both as single dishes and in interferometric networks; and a host of new smaller and short-term experiments are also under development all over the world. However new challenges have arisen in the past decade and a half, particularly the rapid deployment of low earth orbit satellite internet constellations and the pressure as terrestrial telecommunication systems move to high frequencies (such as motor vehicle radars at 77 GHz, and UWB radiodetermination applications in the frequency range 116-260 GHz). The time is now ripe to document the technical advances which have seen these new instruments commissioned or in an advanced state of construction under the selected topic of radio telescopes for the new millennium.

In this selected topic we encourage both detailed technical design papers (for instance addressing antenna design, radio frequency front ends, or high-speed digital signal processing) as well as overview papers describing entire telescopes at system level, or detailed technological advances. Work on new calibration and imaging techniques would also be of great interest. Additionally, papers addressing RFI mitigation, in particular that from satellite constellations, would be very appropriate. Papers addressing algorithms for post-processing calibrated data, or addressing only computational data processing issues, would be considered; however, papers presenting purely astronomical results would likely be outside the scope of the selected topic unless there is a strong link to telescope technology.

Suggested topics for submissions include but are not limited to:

• Improvements to existing telescopes. These may include new design methods, new feed technologies, improved optics, new modelling methods and calibration strategies leveraging these modelling capabilities, upgraded receivers etc.
• Telescopes currently under construction - system description papers would be welcomed.
• New designs and new proposals. These also include application of computational electromagnetics to radio astronomical technologies.
• Measurements of antenna patterns, antenna efficiency and system temperature, comparison of alternate designs for new proposals, antenna feeds, cryogenic receivers etc.
• RFI mitigation, especially considering new challenges posed by large LEO satellite constellations. Spectrum mitigation and RFI monitoring techniques are also welcome topics.

About JSTEAP:

The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Electromagnetics, Antennas and Propagation (JSTEAP) is co-sponsored by the Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S), and the Communications Society (ComSoc). The focus of JSTEAP is on contributions that bridge the gaps between electromagnetics, communications, and microwave technology and manuscripts incorporating at least two of these aspects are particularly encouraged. All types of contributions are welcome including theory, experimental results, designs, applied engineering innovations, surveys, tutorials and reviews. Each issue of JSTEAP is devoted to a specific technical topic and thus provides to JSTEAP readers a collection of up-to-date papers on that topic. These issues are expected to be valuable to the research community and become a source of valuable references.

Open and Transparent Research Exchange

JSTEAP is a fully Open Access journal and is committed to supporting open and transparent research exchange and enabling authors to embrace best practices in data and code sharing. All submitted manuscripts should contain sufficient detail to allow their research contributions and results to be verified and repeated by independent researchers.

For manuscripts with AI-related content, JSTEAP follows IEEE publication policies. In this context, we identify two main categories of submissions; to uphold open and transparent research exchange, the following guidelines apply:

• Manuscripts describing new AI algorithms or substantive methodological advances: Public release of code and training/evaluation datasets is strongly encouraged. If full release is not possible, authors should provide sufficient algorithmic detail and complete training/evaluation protocols, together with access to datasets (public or controlled access), so that independent researchers can reproduce the results.
• Manuscripts applying established AI methods to specific EM/antenna design or propagation modeling problems: These should emphasize verifiable outcomes rather than novelty in the AI methodology. Authors must provide enough detail to enable reproduction of the workflow and results, even if proprietary datasets cannot be released. Acceptable alternatives include: (a) detailed data specifications (e.g., size, sources, preprocessing); (b) full training and inference pipelines (hyperparameters, architectures, loss functions, hardware, compute budget, evaluation metrics); and (c) clear baseline comparisons where feasible.
• Manuscripts with AI contributions outside these categories, or those seeking exceptions to these guidelines, will be considered as long as the principles of open and transparent research exchange—including verification and repeatability of results—are maintained.

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts following the IEEE JSTEAP guidelines. All submissions must be made through the online JSTEAP Author Portal on ScholarOne. Official templates are available via the IEEE Template Selector for both LaTeX and MS Word. Please click on “IEEE Template Selector” and follow the instructions to access the template you need.

Authors should submit their manuscripts according to the schedule below.

Important Dates