The forty antennas can be distributed in four configurations with maximum baselines ranging from 70 m in the most compact array to 3 km in the most extended. All receivers will be dual polarization. Each polarization is to have a bandwidth of 8 GHz. A forty-antenna array has 780 independent baselines. The correlator output will consist of 12.8 Mbytes of data per integration.
Operation is to be remote, with no observer presence at the array site required.
Data is to be archived. The array requires a site with outstanding atmospheric transparency and stability. A superb site has been located in Chile, one that rivals the South Pole in its atmospheric transparency and Mauna Kea. The Chile site also offers improved phase stability compared with Mauna Kea. For spectral line observing, one need only scale the bandwidth of 8 GHz to the spectral resolution desired.