1. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 1 / 25 FASR Subsystem Testbed (FST) Overview Meudon Meeting 28 Jan 2005

2. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 2 / 25 Overview of Project Proposed Goals Hardware Overview Current Status Time-line / Schedule

3. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 3 / 25 Proposed Goals RFI Mitigation –Interferometric and total power observations of terrestrial and satellite sources of radio interference –Characterization of interference levels relative to solar signal –Development of RFI mitigation strategies Identify interference frequencies and blank/remove (determine optimum frequency resolution) Identify intermittent interference and use frequency if okay, but blank if not Produce “fast” algorithms that can work in real time

4. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 4 / 25 Distance Measuring Equipment Aircraft Interference

5. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 5 / 25 Blanking Performance

6. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 6 / 25 Proposed Goals Calibration Strategies –Investigate the use of satellite beacons for calibration –Investigate methods of calibrating across band vs. integrated band—is the band calibration separable? Support FASR correlator design task Solar Observations –Observe type III and other dm bursts –Verify phase closure and measure centroid position as a function of time and frequency –Obtain type III trajectories, fragmentation

7. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 7 / 25 Hardware Overview Front End BoxControl Room Chassis Ctrl Rm PC Remote PC Colors denote different locations blue = front end box (thermal control?) orange = chassis in control room yellow = PC in control room green = remote PC System Block Diagram

8. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 8 / 25 Storage PC Two Raid-0 250 GB SATA disks (sustained transfer speed better than 40 MB/s) 3.2 GHz CPU 2 GB RAM External 250 GB disk (for data transport?) DVD+RW disk writer (for selected data transport) CD-RW disk writer

9. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 9 / 25 Digitizer 4 channels 1 GHz bandwidth 1-4 GS/s sampling rate Acquisition memory 2 Mpoints / channel Full front-end amplification with internal calibration Mezzanine front-end with input protection Complete pre- and post-triggering Multi-purpose I/O connectors for trigger, clock, reference and control signals Low dead-time (< 800 ns) sequential recording with time stamps for up to 8000 segments Built-in 5 ps Trigger Time Interpolator (TTI) for accurate timing measurements 1 GHz Auto-Synchronization-Bus (ASBus) for trigger and clock signal distribution Modular, 6U CompactPCI standard (PXI compliant) Low power (< 40 W) High-speed PCI bus transfers data at sustained rates up to 100 MB/s to host PC Device drivers for Windows 95/98/NT4.0/2000/XP, VxWorks and Linux Auto-install software with application code examples for C/C++, Visual Basic, MATLAB, National Instruments LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI Acqiris DC271 + Cougar Chassis Tests show excellent performance: Phase jitter (time synchronization, 30 ps) Triggered acquisition (segments) Sustained transfer speed (74 MB/s) Retrigger time (700 ns) Aliasing characteristics

10. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 10 / 25 Spectral Line Downconverter

11. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 11 / 25 Spectral Line Downconverter

12. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 12 / 25 Image Rejection Spectral Line Downconverter

13. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 13 / 25 Spectral Line Downconverter History Downconverter Revision MaterialRF Input (GHz) LO Freqs (GHz) Baseband Frequency (GHz) CobraFR4 T=10 mil, W=18 mil Microstrip 0.5 - 4.52.0, 2.5, 3.0, and 3.5 0.5-1.0 SZA WidebandRO4350 T=10 mil, W=22 mil Microstrip 1.0 - 5.02.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 0.5-1.0 Spectral LineRO4350 T=20 mil, W=31 mil, G=11 mil GCPW 1.0 - 5.0Many between 2.0 – 4.0 0.5-1.0

14. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 14 / 25 Block Downconverter 1-9 GHz 1-5 GHz 9-5 GHz Same design as for CARMA—mechanical design for chassis exists. Need three of items in box, one of items for LO Control Item: switch (1-5 vs. 9-5 GHz bands) RF from optical receiver 1-5 GHz IF to spectral line downconverter

15. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 15 / 25 Optical Link Same design as for CARMA—Photon Systems Inc already agreed to make them for us. Plan to set one up in lab for end-to-end test Control Item: PAM (post-amplifier module) Monitor Items

16. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 16 / 25 Post-Amplifier Module

17. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 17 / 25 Current Status Lab at NJIT has been developed for setup and test of hardware design. Digitizer and PC are available for testing. All tests so far are very encouraging. LabView software for acquisition, quick look, and playback have been developed. Spectral line downconverter not yet available, but similar one is available for testing of setup and procedures. Block downconverter is understood to part level, but not yet purchased and tested. Optical link will be ATA 11 GHz link (also used for CARMA)— provided by PSI. Details yet to be worked out. PAM (post-amplifier module) appears to be needed. Cost and complexity of operation are unknown. Mechanical design as yet completely undeveloped. CARMA mechanical design is available as a guide. Control software not yet developed. CARMA software is available as a guide.

18. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 18 / 25 Time-Line / Schedule NJIT: 2005 Feb: CARMA board testing begins 2005 Apr: PAM module and optical link assembled, Spectral line downconverter obtained. 2005 July: NJIT hardware mockup complete 2005 Aug: Control system functional at NJIT 2005 Sep: Hardware mechanical design complete 2005 Nov: Parts obtained for two additional channels 2005 Dec: Hardware shipped to OVRO Berkeley: 2005 Feb: Draft data format 2005 May: Software correlator (IDL code) functional at basic level, working on NJIT test data 2005 July: Data format complete 2005 Sep: Definition of software correlator “plug-in” modules begun 2006 Mar: Software correlator “plug-in” modules ready for testing

19. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 19 / 25 Time Line / Schedule (cont’d) Maryland: 2005 Apr: Observing / Acquisition sequence definition for various modes (terrestrial RFI, satellite RFI, satellite calibration, solar+RFI, solar bursts) 2005 Jun: Strategies for characterization of RFI from data 2005 Aug: Begin exploring amp/phase data from NJIT (test inputs) OVRO: 2005 May: Trenching begins at OVRO 2005 July: Optical cable and racks / dog boxes for equipment installed at OVRO 2005 Dec: Hardware installed at OVRO—testing begins 2006 Jan: Satellite data taken for calibration / phase closure demo 2006 Jan: Solar / RFI data taking begins Caltech: 2005 Feb: Software for controlling CARMA board 2005 May: Spectral line downconverter 2005 Jun: Software for controlling spectral line downconverter 2005 Nov: 3 additional downconverters plus hardware chassis

20. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 20 / 25 FOCIS FASR Offline Correlator Implemented in Software

21. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 21 / 25 FOCIS Philosophy FOCIS plays the roll of all the hardware and software between the digitized IF and the interim database. This implies what FOCIS should do. It also implies what tasks are outside its scope.

22. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 22 / 25 FOCIS Inputs Primary input data: –Data sample files generated by NJIT acquisition system –OR Simulated data files generated by UCB software Metadata file to support identification of appropriate input file CLI-specified analysis parameters Future option: (Simulated) RFI and calibration database files Otherwise, all input ancillary parameters required for analysis should be included in the data sample files. Each independent execution analyzes a single scan (or part thereof). FOCIS has no knowledge of overall objective of scan.

23. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 23 / 25 FOCIS Outputs Primary output is semi-calibrated visibility files that mimic the interim database. Output displays will mimic the role of possible realtime correlator displays. Additional displays and analysis will be limited to features that directly support debugging or prompt evaluation of output. It is assumed that analysis of the FOCIS output files uses software developed elsewhere (Umd?)

24. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 24 / 25 FOCIS Implementation Optimized for transparency and flexibility in analysis options. Not necessarily optimized for speed. IDL-coded using ssw support as needed. Developed to run on normally configured Windows PC’s (expected, but not guaranteed to also run on Unix workstations)

25. 2005 Jan 28Meudon FASR Meeting 25 / 25 Correlator Flow Diagram? Downsampling? E.g. 3 bit Delay Adjustments FFT or Polyphase Filter RFI Flagging Correlation Complex Gain Adjustments Averaging / Accumulation Frequency Averaging From other channel RFI Database