A digital-receiver for the Murchison Widefield Array
Author(s)
Williams, Christopher Leigh; McWhirter, Stephen R.; Kincaid, Barton B.; Lonsdale, Colin John; Oberoi, Divya; Salah, Joseph E.; Morgan, Edward H; Hewitt, Jacqueline N; Kratzenberg, Eric W; Cappallo, Roger J; Goeke, Robert F; Remillard, Ronald A; Corey, Brian E; Rogers, Alan E E; Whitney, Alan R; ... Show more Show less
DownloadHewitt_A digital-receiver.pdf (947.6Kb)
OPEN_ACCESS_POLICY
Open Access Policy
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
An FPGA-based digital-receiver has been developed for a low-frequency imaging radio interferometer, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). The MWA, located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia, consists of 128 dual-polarized aperture-array elements (tiles) operating between 80 and 300 MHz, with a total processed bandwidth of 30.72 MHz for each polarization. Radio-frequency signals from the tiles are amplified and band limited using analog signal conditioning units; sampled and channelized by digital-receivers. The signals from eight tiles are processed by a single digital-receiver, thus requiring 16 digital-receivers for the MWA. The main function of the digital-receivers is to digitize the broad-band signals from each tile, channelize them to form the sky-band, and transport it through optical fibers to a centrally located correlator for further processing. The digital-receiver firmware also implements functions to measure the signal power, perform power equalization across the band, detect interference-like events, and invoke diagnostic modes. The digital-receiver is controlled by high-level programs running on a single-board-computer. This paper presents the digital-receiver design, implementation, current status, and plans for future enhancements.
Date issued
2015-02Department
Haystack Observatory; MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space ResearchJournal
Experimental Astronomy
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Citation
Prabu, Thiagaraj, K. S. Srivani, D. Anish Roshi, P. A. Kamini, S. Madhavi, David Emrich, Brian Crosse, et al. “A Digital-Receiver for the MurchisonWidefield Array.” Exp Astron 39, no. 1 (February 22, 2015): 73–93.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0922-6435
1572-9508