1. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 FPGA SPECTROMETER COMMISSIONING Spectrometer description How it will be used Where we are at. What needs to be done More info: Pdev device: http://www.naic.edu/~phil/hardware/pdev/pdev.html This talk : http://www.naic.edu/~phil/talks/talks.html

2. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 Description.. what we bought/made 20 spectrometer boxes purchased from jeff mock 1 box can process 1 beam of alfa. 14 boxes allows for 2 simultaneous alfa experiments. 2 boxes for aeronomy, planetary radar 16 fileservers (each with 4 Tbytes of disc). IF mixer chassis IF to base band (I,Q) (dana)

3. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 Description.. 1 box 2 paths each handling 170 MHz Bandwidth A/D.. 12 bit 170 MHz I Q samplers Digital mixer. Digital low pass filter (decimation 2..1024) Optional time domain data: 4,8,16 bits Polyphase filter bank..16 to 8192 channels. I, polA/B, full stokes power computation. Sum spectra. Output 32,16,8 bit spectral data. Box output I/O rate: 80 Mbytes/sec (both paths)

4. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 How it will be used Alfa: covers 1225-1525 MHz x 7 beams Galfacts: galaxy full stokes –65Mb/sec * 7 = 450 Mb/sec. Palfa search: Upgrade 100 to 300 MHz BW. –32Mb/sec*7= 225 Mb/sec. Aeronomy: IF sampling, time domain data –32,20,10,.. bandwidths. 32 MHz Bw gets plasma line in 1 band –Sampling synced to transmitter pulses and echo return. Planetary Radar: IF sampling, time domain data. –40,20,10,.. Bandwidths with 2,4,8,16 bit samples. –Fir filters for CW, sync filters for ranging. –Digital doppler correction by interpolating, dropping samples. Single Pixel observations: –Use 7*300 MHz bandwidth to cover up tp 2 GHz bw.

5. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 Where we are at. Alfa: –Hardware 14 spectrometer boxes with 7 mixer chassis installed. 14 file servers installed, 7 in use. –Software: Acquires data, writes to disc in pdev or fits format. Using the software to debug alfa/pdev combination. Aeron: –Test plasma line data taken Planetary radar –20 MHz bw data taken on saturns rings.

6. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 What needs to be done. Hardware/FPGA programming: –Continue dynamic range studies of system Update mixers to match pdev input levels. Alfa long recovery time (> secs) from radars killer for galfacts –Take a closer look at birdies generated internally to the boxes. –Fgpa programming (tamara has left) Debug filters (fir and sync) Debug digital doppler –Single pixel.. Need to widen the downstairs IF/LO to handle 2 GHz bw. –14 boxes, > 200 cables is labor intensive to work on. We’ve lost 4 techs in the last year or 2 (cheo rosa,tony noya,jose vives, jesus rios) all with > 35 years experience. Currently no digital techs.

7. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 What needs to be done (software) Integrate running of spectrometer with GUI. Fill in all fits header keyword data. Speed up startup configuration of device. Test winking cal, blanking. Automate optimum level setting and configuration for all possible configs. Pulsar users want psrfits format. This is different from the fits files we are generating. Analysis software. Continue developing IDL routines to verify the device operation. Work on system/program documentation (see web site).

8. AUSAC Meeting · March 17&18, 2008 When …. Shooting for may 2008 for galfacts alfa observing. This will also enable any of the other alfa spectral line surveys to use the device. –Alfa compression may not be solved by then. Pulsar fits file format will come after galfacts (since palfa is already taking data). Planetary radar/aeronomy needs FPGA programming and Tamara Hall has left so this is on hold. 2 GHz single pixel still in the design stages.