The aerospace low-noise millimeter-wave spectral line receiver

A multichannel millimeter-wave receiver has been designed and built to study narrow-band signals from the natural background. This receiver is used with the Aerospace 4.6-m millimeter-wave antenna at El Segundo, CA. It is a superheterodyne mixer receiver which will tune over the 70-120-GHz frequency range with a system noise temperature of ~ 500 K (DSB). The spectral line receiver includes the RF system, the IF system, the local oscillator (LO) phase-locking system, the multichannel filter receivers, and the data processing system. This short paper describes the design and operation of the spectral line receiver and provides a sample of the results obtained.