JVLA capabilities to be offered for semester 2013A

1. JVLA capabilities to be offered for semester 2013A Claire Chandler

2. Capability definition and process • Considerations: • Promises made in Program Operating Plan • Promises made by EVLA construction project • Technical and software readiness • Commissioning readiness • Hand-over of user portal software and databases from Open Sky Software to NRAO on June 30, including PST • Proposal presented by Michael Rupen to ECSV group following discussions with software developers • Call for Proposals on July 9 for semester 2013A will be for first observations under “Full Operations”, but commissioning not complete by then • Concept of Shared Risk will continue for the moment

3. Capability categories • Observing capabilities will be divided into 3 categories: • General capabilities for Full Operations • Well tested capabilities, if an observation fails because of software or hardware problem, it is returned to the dynamic scheduling queue • Shared Risk • Anything not under “general capabilities” that can be set up in the OPT and run through the OST but is not well tested • SR observers will receive 1 hr of test time to validate their correlator set-up and observing procedure • Success => submit science SB • Failure => come and visit for 1-2 weeks to help sort it out, or forfeit science time • All Shared Risk projects will be observing priority B • Resident Shared Risk • For stuff we really don’t know how to do yet, or is known not to be robust • Will relax the residency requirements in Full Operations: no minimum stay of 3 months, but still 1 month visit per 20 hours of observing time

4. General Capabilities (1) • 8-bit samplers • 2 basebands, 1 GHz BW each • Up to 16 subband pairs per baseband • Independently tunable • Independent bandwidths • Doppler setting per baseband • Baseline board stacking by factors of 2, to give up to 4096 channels per subband • Up to 16384 channels total • 3-bit samplers • 128 MHz subbands, contiguous in frequency within a baseband • Up to 64x128 MHz subbands to cover available receiver BW • Full, dual, or single polarization to give spectral resolutions 2, 1, 0.5 MHz

5. General Capabilities (2) • Phased VLA output for VLBI • 8-bit samplers • 1 or 2 x 128 MHz subbands, independently phased • 256 channels per subband • No subarrays or baseline board stacking • No simultaneous access to unused correlator resources • Subarrays • Up to 3 independent subarrays • 8-bit samplers, 128 MHz contiguous subbands only • Separate SBs for each subarray • Observer specifies which antennas go in each subarray • Some restrictions on number of antennas per subarray • Data rate restrictions for general capabilities • 20 MB/s • Also limit allowed dump time per array configuration

6. Shared Risk Capabilities • One or two recirculation set-ups that have already been used by RSRO participants • Subarrays with 3-bit samplers • Fast dump modes up to 60 MB/s (8-bit), dump times >=50ms • More than 16 subband pairs per baseband with 8-bit • 3-bit with subband BWs narrower than 128 MHz • RSRO: • OTF mosaics • Phased array for all but VLBI • Real-timetransient detection • Pulsars • Complicated subarrays • General recirculation set-ups

7. PST requirements • For General and Shared Risk Capabilities, need a mechanism for users to specify their correlator set-up for the July 9 CfP • General Capabilities • SSS Group will create a special javaws tool that will output correlator configuration information • Standard NRAO defaults matching drop-down menu in PST • User-defined set-ups that can be uploaded to PST • Phased EVLA will be enabled under VLBA resources • Shared Risk Capabilities • Include in javaws tool, or validate through the RCT and provide resource ID in PST • RSRO • Free-form text in comment field, as before