Baseband processing, e-VLBI, and SKA simulations Steven Tingay Swinburne University of Technology MNRF Symposium, 8 June, 2004

Swinburne MNRF Program Provide facilities that will benefit the Australian community now, strengthen Australia’s bid for the SKA, and make a significant contribution directly to the international SKA project Baseband processing applications, SKA prototyping and demonstration –Pulsar timing using PC clusters (Matthew Bailes talk) –e-VLBI. Demonstrates : baseband recording/buffering; real-time data transport and correlation on long baselines; Data archiving, sensitive wide-field imaging; e-VLBI is the SKA without the collecting area or bandwidth SKA simulations –Development of MIT/Haystack simulator for SKA –Collaboration in EU FP6 proposal –Involvement in SSWG –SKA cost estimation

e-VLBI Develop baseband recording technologies for VLBI; Develop software correlators and other baseband processing technologies for VLBI; Collaborate with ATNF and University of Tasmania – use multi-Gbps links: –5 point plan over next 3 – 4 years (See Tasso Tzioumis); –Demonstration of e-VLBI this year; –Gbps e-VLBI within 12 months between some antennas; –Real-time e-VLBI by 2007 using broad-band ATCA correlator –Well-developed science case

Recent highlight – global disk- based and e-VLBI experiment Nine antennas in two seven antenna experiments in April 2004 – most ambitious technical demonstration of disk- based VLBI: –Australia: ATCA, Mopra, Parkes, Hobart, Tidbinbilla, Ceduna –USA: Pie Town (VLBA) –South Africa: Hartebeestoek –Japan: Kashima Three different disk-based VLBI recording systems: –PC-EVN –MkV (two varieties) –K5 Software correlation in near real-time –Fringes between 4 Australian antennas –Software correlation of full experiment on Swinburne supercomputer

SKA simulations Provide supercomputing resources and software development to the national and global SKA simulation communities: –ATNF (array configuration studies); –University of Melbourne (EoR simulations) –MIT/Haystack (simulation code) –Oxford (science simulations) –EU FP6 (all aspects of SKA simulation – will find out in next few months) –… –Coordinated by SSWG (reports to the ISSC - chaired by Tingay)

SKA cost estimation Collaboration between Swinburne University, SKA International Project Office, and International Engineering Management Team; Standard definition of SKA engineering subsystems; Estimate the construction and operations cost for the different SKA configurations; Include operational costs, software costs, etc; Implemented as an interactive software tool for general or expert use; To be reviewed at Penticton meeting next month.