Road to MeerKAT KAT-7 DBE - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Road to MeerKATKAT-7 DBE

Alan Langman

• Objectives of meerKAT
• Location LocationLocation
• MeerKAT Engineering Specification
• Prototypes to MeerKAT
• KAT-7
• Mention Control Interface
• Other research
• Questions?

KAT/MeerKAT Objectives

• Build a world class radio telescope (up to 80 dishes)
• Choose a frequency range that is likely to have high science impact.
• Commission a 7 dish system from end of 2009, engineering risk mitigation and do some early science.
• Train a new generation of scientists and engineers who are capable to participate in large international projects, such as the SKA.
• Provide an excellent facility for local and international scientists.
• Implement mission-driven innovation to mobilise industry, academia and research fraternity.
• SKA pathfinder

The SKA & KAT site

• Imaging (continuum + spectral line)
• Beamforming(continuum + spectral line)
• Pulsar Timing
• Transient Detection
• Baseband recording
• VLBI
• (and more … scope is still under revision)

Dishes and Feeds:

80 x 12 m dishes, each equipped with a single pixel prime focus feed

Key interfaces

Optical RF links:

80 x 2 optical links

(80 dishes, 2 polarisations)

Digital Receiver

Station Controller (Karoo)

Front end station processor

Station data:

High speed, large data volume, long distance data transfer Karoo Station to off-site data processing facility.

Back end station processor

Operations Centre

(Cape Town)

Station data:

Distribution internationally, typically over TCP/IP.

User (Scientist)

Internet access

Same site in the Karoo – 2009 onwards

On the proposed SKA site in Karoo – 2008 onwards

MeerKAT roll-out & commissioning

KAT-7 construction & commissioning

Current – at HartRAO

Experimental development model (XDM)

Current – at SAAO

Completed

Phased Experimental Demonstrator (PED)

4x3x2 FPA

11 April 2007

Drift scan across Cygnus A

7

• Imaging (continuum + spectral line)
• Beamforming(continuum + spectral line)
• Pulsar Timing
• Baseband recording
• VLBI

• The katADC shall include an E2PROM to store configuration information.
• The katADC shall operate from 50MHz to 1GHz (goal 1.5GHz).
• The katADC shall sample data with more than 6.5 ENOB over the full operating frequency range.
• The katADC shall have a 50 ohm termination on the input, switchable via a suitable RF switch.
• The katADC shall have 30dB RF gain control
• The katADC shall have an onboard PLL clock generator.
• The katADC shall have RFI shielding.

• 100% CASPER tools
• Developed Board Support Package for ROACH
• Integrated into toolchain
• U-boot port on board
• Ready for ROACH

• Control interface are lines of text
• Similar to tinysh, but with two differences:
• Syntax somewhat more formal, more amenable to machine parsing
• Not only set and get commands – commands defined for application domain (eg: start a data capture)
• In concept similar to a shell, but also SMTP, IMAP, POP, FTP

• Runs out of FPGA blockrams on PPC
• Control protocol runs over serial port
• Multiple simultaneous data products over network interfaces (100Mbit, 10Gbit):
• Histograms (2 * 256 bins)
• Radiometers (2 * integrated power value)
• Spectrometer (1024 channels, IQUV integrated)
• Raw (2 * 1024 complex values)

• Create and destroy streams
• Set up parameters for data products
• Start and stop data streams
• Data transfer
• High speed data products emitted autonomously by gateware over 10Gbit
• Lower bandwidth data products transferred by processor via 100Mbit interface

• Broadcast histogram data for 15 seconds:
• ?capture-create stream1
• ?capture-source stream1 hist
• ?capture-destination stream1 xdp1:192.168.20.255:7002
• ?channel-dump-rate stream1 4
• ?capture-start stream1 1194508376
• ?capture-stop stream1 1194508391
• ?capture-destroy stream1

• Set time
• Configure network interfaces
• Dump and restore settings to survive reprogramming
• Report log events
• ...

www.ska.ac.za

www.kat.ac.za

www.hartrao.ac.za