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VLBA Sensitivity Upgrade Project Status

VLBA Sensitivity Upgrade Project Status. Jon Romney NRAO, Socorro 7 th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting Haystack Observatory 2009 November 3–4 . Project Goal. Expand the VLBA’s data-path bandwidth to 4 Gbps by 2011.

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VLBA Sensitivity Upgrade Project Status

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  1. VLBA Sensitivity UpgradeProject Status Jon Romney NRAO, Socorro 7th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting Haystack Observatory 2009 November 3–4

  2. Project Goal Expand the VLBA’s data-path bandwidth to 4 Gbps by 2011 Goal has been widely and frequently announced within the radio astronomy, astrometry, and geodesycommunities. VLBA users are waiting to exploit it to enable a variety of compelling new science. 7th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting

  3. Implementation • Goal Corresponds to: • 2 IFs @ 500 MHz BW @ 2-bit Nyquist samples • [i.e., retaining VLBA’s original IF system.] • New Elements • RDBE sampler/filter unit. • Mark 5C recording system. • DiFX software correlator. 7th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting

  4. Project Status • DiFX Software Correlator Operational • Comparisons with original VLBA correlator yielded excellent results. • Exactly matched integrations show amplitude and phase agreeing far better than realistic expectations. • Science use cases, analyzed by expert VLBA users, finding primarily limitations of data-analysis algorithms, not problems in correlator results. • DiFX alone enables some new scientific techniques. • High spectral resolution. • Wide-field imaging. • Special pulsar processing. • Announced for correlation of all observations proposed Oct. 1. • Observation trimester beginning mid-January. • Planning to ramp up use beginning as soon as possible. • But DiFX can’t really come into its own without wideband observations. 7th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting

  5. Status, continued • RDBE & Mark 5C • Absolutely central to achieving 4-Gbps goal. • Some initial efforts successfully behind us: • ROACH final design, layout, exhaustive testing, beginning of production. • Mark 5C concept design, development and production of 10 Gig E interface mezzanine board. • But both efforts have encountered schedule slippages, sufficient to become serious concerns. • Both NRAO &Haystack have major competing priorities: EVLA & MWA. • Conduant also? • To recover schedule, we need to consider alternative approaches, possibly including • Additional personnel resources. • (Matt Luce recently joined NRAO team, for FPGA development.) • Simplified, less comprehensive design “at least initially”. • We hope to revisit these points throughout this meeting! 7th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting

  6. Thank You 7th US VLBI Technical Coordination Meeting

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