australia telescope national facility june 2009 · radio telescopes, as a national research...
TRANSCRIPT
For Further Information
Contact: Gabby Russell
CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility
Email: [email protected]
ASKAP project website: www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap
Australia Telescope National Facility June 2009
ASKAP Technical Update
The ASKAP Technical Update contains a brief summary of recent science and
technical developments related to the Australian SKA Pathfi nder (ASKAP) project.
It documents, at a top level, recent developments and milestones reached by core
CSIRO ASKAP project teams. This, the inaugural edition, also includes information on
the ASKAP project structure, management, system engineering, team experience and
overall project impact.
The ASKAP Technical Update is regularly updated and posted online at
www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap.
Project Structure and Management
ASKAP is an innovative, aggressive project to deliver a world-class radio telescope as part of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility. Given the level of new technology to be incorporated, the project is managed as a ‘spiral development’ allowing those elements which have a lesser degree of risk to proceed while allowing the maximum time for development of the less mature elements. This necessarily means that at a given point in time there are research, development and production activities underway.
The project is structured into Integrated Project Teams (IPTs) along technical and management lines but with a motivated System Engineering, Integration and Commissioning IPT to keep the focus on the overall system. Along with key support staff, the ASKAP Project Offi ce is staffed by a Director, Lead Manager, Business and Enterprise Development Manager, Project Scientist, Project Engineer, System Scientist and System Engineer.
The project conducts regular reviews with international experts in their domain. Over the past 15 months, ASKAP has been presented to 11 external project reviews (Governmental, Enterprise, Industry and Technical), three external oversight committees for the development and validation of the
science case and draft user access policy, as well as four CSIRO ATNF project review board meetings. In this period, over 40 reviewers from 25 different institutions (nine in Australia) and six different countries have been involved.
System Engineering
CSIRO ATNF is the prime system integrator, leveraging industry input, design and contracts to produce the most cost-effective instrument. Radio astronomy instrumentation, systems and operations is our core business and CSIRO ATNF is a world leader in this fi eld. A detailed system analysis in the early R&D phase has led ASKAP to the existing design incorporating 12-metre
prime-focus, three-axis antennas with an f/D of 0.5 and phased array feeds with a fi eld-of-view of about 30 square degrees. The optimisation is a function of time, as the cost of the digital electronics and energy per operation decreases and the design projects forward to the appropriate time frame.
The project is being deployed in a remote outback area in the Murchison region of Western Australia, making reliability and maintainability key elements in the deployment of ASKAP. The life cycle cost of ownership is the design metric but within a total cost envelope for construction, which does provide a tension in design trade-offs. Energy is another key
> Artist’s impression of ASKAP at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO). Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions. Design data provided by CSIRO.
ASKAP MRO Related Activities
The request for tender for design work at Boolardy Homestead has been completed with a company selected to perform the work. Requests for tender for the remainder of the MRO infrastructure work will appear in June 2009. Preparation for the Murchison Widefi eld Array has continued with installation of upgraded beamformers and antenna tile cables, and implementation of remote monitoring and control of the generator. Detailed planning for the deployment of the PAPER (Precision Array to Probe Epoch of Reionization) Experiment at the MRO in September 2009 is also well underway.
ASKAP System Engineering, Integration and Commissioning
An interdisciplinary summit has been held to survey the overall picture of ASKAP calibration strategies from instrument end-to-end. The labelling and identifying scheme to be used for all ASKAP modules and printed circuit boards has been determined, and the fi rst two of four prototype shielded cabinets have been delivered.
ASKAP Science and User Policy
Presentations on ASKAP have been given at the Joint European National Astronomy Meeting, Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, University of Oxford, and the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand Annual Meeting. The terms of reference for the ASKAP Survey Science Project Assignment Committee have been completed. Thirty-eight expressions of interest for ASKAP Survey Science Projects have been received (the fi nal proposals are due by 15 June), representing a total requested telescope observing time of over 24 years.
SKA Related Activities
CSIRO representatives attended a meeting on PrepSKA WP3 (Site Characterisation) activities, held in Manchester, where it was agreed that the sensitive radio frequency interference monitoring of the core candidate SKA sites should not be contaminated with noise from precursor construction activity. ASKAP domain specialist staff have recently participated in several international teleconferences organised by the SKA Project Development Offi ce.
ASKAP technical update.indd 1-2ASKAP technical update.indd 1-2 12/6/09 4:42:22 PM12/6/09 4:42:22 PM
consideration, and energy effi cient electronic and cooling designs that are fully integrated are being investigated as a necessity. Further, production considerations have been investigated and incorporated from the very start.
The illustration below shows the ASKAP system and data fl ow. The antennas are deployed in an optimised 6km confi guration on the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) grounds adjacent to the control building, which houses the beamformers and correlator. The data are then transmitted over a dedicated optical fi bre link to the processing computer at the MRO Support Facility. The processed data products are then archived and accessed via the ASKAP Science Data Archive Facility (ASDAF).
SKA Interaction
The team at CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility has been involved with the international SKA project from the very start, and remain so to this day. CSIRO ATNF staff sit on all Working Groups, Committees and Design Groups and provide key technical input across all domains to the SKA Project Development Offi ce based in Manchester, UK. Structures mirroring
the international domain specialist and technology groups have been set up to ensure effective input to the international project. Key ASKAP Project Offi ce staff have attended all international SKA meetings and have participated in over 90% of the many relevant technical and governance teleconferences.
Experience
CSIRO is a pioneer and world leader in radio astronomy:
• The CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility operates the Australia Telescope, a set of eight individual radio telescopes, as a national research facility for use by Australian and international researchers.
• CSIRO ATNF is ranked second in the world in terms of institutions providing world-class radio astronomy facilities as determined by the number of refereed papers generated (Trimble and Zaich 2006, PASP 118: 933–938).
• When constructed, ASKAP will be one of the most powerful survey radio astronomy instruments in existence, adding to CSIRO ATNF’s capability.
• ASKAP team members have been involved in most of the world’s state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities and bring this experience in telescope systems to the project.
Australian astronomical research has a long and illustrious history backed up by the development of novel and ground-breaking instrumentation at radio, microwave and optical wavelengths, some of it at very remote sites (e.g. the South Pole). In addition to the CSIRO ATNF, Australia also has other world class centres developing astronomical instrumentation, including
Overall Project Impact
ASKAP is strategically focused to deliver :
• A world class radio telescope at Australia’s candidate core site for the SKA.
• Phased array receiver technologies which demonstrate signifi cant advantages over conventional horn arrays for radio astronomy in terms of observing speed and effi ciency per unit cost.
In terms of technology, ASKAP will impact the design of the mid-frequency range (~500 MHz – 3 GHz) SKA telescope by developing and demonstrating:
• Designs, models and operating phased array receivers which meet the science drivers for ASKAP, namely:
- Operating over all, or part of, the 500 MHz – 3 GHz band.
- Full processing of 300 MHz instantaneous bandwidth over many spectral channels and the wide fi eld-of-view.
- Generating large fi elds-of-view from multiple synthesized beams (30 sq degrees).
> The ASKAP data fl ow process.
IPT Progress Update
• Low-cost, highly integrated receiver systems, including low-noise amplifi ers which achieve a Tsys of 50K or less.
• Algorithms and signal processing systems to support the massive data rates and complex calibration requirements across 16K channels.
• Antenna designs which support cheap and effi cient manufacture for 12m-class dishes while also supporting very high dynamic range imaging requirements.
• New and effi cient computing algorithms to handle beamformed data from the entire array on a real-time basis.
Timeline
The timeline below schematically shows the development and deployment of ASKAP. The dashed line is the antenna delivery schedule, while the blocks to the left show the system research, design and development of ‘BETA’, the Boolardy Engineering Test Array comprising prototype systems on the fi rst six production antennas, and ASKAP. The blocks to the right show the deployment of BETA (purple) and ASKAP (green). SKA activities run throughout the entire process.
The ASKAP Integrated Project Teams have been reaching key milestones and progressing towards
successful delivery of the project.
ASKAP Antennas
The ASKAP antenna contract production readiness review was successfully completed on time, including a full and complete fi nite element analysis conducted by the contractor CETC54 to CSIRO specifi cations. The factory, site and commissioning plan is fully drafted and factory acceptance testing at CETC54 is on schedule for late August 2009. A life-size, timber model of the ASKAP antennas (known as ‘SAPKAP’) has been constructed and is being used to inform the design and location of the antenna systems and integration.
ASKAP Analog Systems
The project design review panel met and found that the designs and prototypes for the phased array feed are well engineered and the analog systems are on track to meet the high-level instrument science goals. The back plane layout is nearing completion, and the digital pin confi guration has been optimized for easy routing of the 50-ohm differential and JTAG diagnostic lines.
ASKAP Digital Systems
The digital systems hardware has been produced on schedule and budget, and prototypes of this hardware have been designed and peer reviewed. The manufacture and assembly of printed circuit boards has commenced with prototypes of all six major boards expected during July 2009. Two of these boards have already arrived and are now under test. Firmware for control and monitoring has been written and demonstrated to work. The digital signal processing and communication fi rmware (which includes a coarse fi lter bank and 10Gbps communications for the antennas) is currently in development.
ASKAP Computing
Expressions of interest from industry have been sought for the development of a prototype single digital backend computing system and evaluations will be completed by the end of June 2009. Design of the ASKAP scheduling block, which will be used at all levels of the data fl ow process, has started. The USB2SPI EPICS driver is almost complete and ready to be tested, and the fi rst spectral line cube has been obtained from the imaging software.
Designs for the internal antenna electrical distribution, switchboard and control systems have been produced. Two sets of serial peripheral interface modules have been assembled and tested: one set will be integrated into the Parkes 12m antenna testbed (used for testing all major systems being developed for ASKAP) and the other will be used for testing under EPICS. New complex programmable logic device code means that the ROACH can now be programmed, a signifi cant development given the complexity of the card.
> Timeline for the development and deployment of ASKAP.
ASKAP technical update.indd 3-4ASKAP technical update.indd 3-4 12/6/09 4:42:23 PM12/6/09 4:42:23 PM
the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
ASKAP Data and Signal Transport
consideration, and energy effi cient electronic and cooling designs that are fully integrated are being investigated as a necessity. Further, production considerations have been investigated and incorporated from the very start.
The illustration below shows the ASKAP system and data fl ow. The antennas are deployed in an optimised 6km confi guration on the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) grounds adjacent to the control building, which houses the beamformers and correlator. The data are then transmitted over a dedicated optical fi bre link to the processing computer at the MRO Support Facility. The processed data products are then archived and accessed via the ASKAP Science Data Archive Facility (ASDAF).
SKA Interaction
The team at CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility has been involved with the international SKA project from the very start, and remain so to this day. CSIRO ATNF staff sit on all Working Groups, Committees and Design Groups and provide key technical input across all domains to the SKA Project Development Offi ce based in Manchester, UK. Structures mirroring
the international domain specialist and technology groups have been set up to ensure effective input to the international project. Key ASKAP Project Offi ce staff have attended all international SKA meetings and have participated in over 90% of the many relevant technical and governance teleconferences.
Experience
CSIRO is a pioneer and world leader in radio astronomy:
• The CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility operates the Australia Telescope, a set of eight individual radio telescopes, as a national research facility for use by Australian and international researchers.
• CSIRO ATNF is ranked second in the world in terms of institutions providing world-class radio astronomy facilities as determined by the number of refereed papers generated (Trimble and Zaich 2006, PASP 118: 933–938).
• When constructed, ASKAP will be one of the most powerful survey radio astronomy instruments in existence, adding to CSIRO ATNF’s capability.
• ASKAP team members have been involved in most of the world’s state-of-the-art radio telescope facilities and bring this experience in telescope systems to the project.
Australian astronomical research has a long and illustrious history backed up by the development of novel and ground-breaking instrumentation at radio, microwave and optical wavelengths, some of it at very remote sites (e.g. the South Pole). In addition to the CSIRO ATNF, Australia also has other world class centres developing astronomical instrumentation, including
Overall Project Impact
ASKAP is strategically focused to deliver :
• A world class radio telescope at Australia’s candidate core site for the SKA.
• Phased array receiver technologies which demonstrate signifi cant advantages over conventional horn arrays for radio astronomy in terms of observing speed and effi ciency per unit cost.
In terms of technology, ASKAP will impact the design of the mid-frequency range (~500 MHz – 3 GHz) SKA telescope by developing and demonstrating:
• Designs, models and operating phased array receivers which meet the science drivers for ASKAP, namely:
- Operating over all, or part of, the 500 MHz – 3 GHz band.
- Full processing of 300 MHz instantaneous bandwidth over many spectral channels and the wide fi eld-of-view.
- Generating large fi elds-of-view from multiple synthesized beams (30 sq degrees).
> The ASKAP data fl ow process.
IPT Progress Update
• Low-cost, highly integrated receiver systems, including low-noise amplifi ers which achieve a Tsys of 50K or less.
• Algorithms and signal processing systems to support the massive data rates and complex calibration requirements across 16K channels.
• Antenna designs which support cheap and effi cient manufacture for 12m-class dishes while also supporting very high dynamic range imaging requirements.
• New and effi cient computing algorithms to handle beamformed data from the entire array on a real-time basis.
Timeline
The timeline below schematically shows the development and deployment of ASKAP. The dashed line is the antenna delivery schedule, while the blocks to the left show the system research, design and development of ‘BETA’, the Boolardy Engineering Test Array comprising prototype systems on the fi rst six production antennas, and ASKAP. The blocks to the right show the deployment of BETA (purple) and ASKAP (green). SKA activities run throughout the entire process.
The ASKAP Integrated Project Teams have been reaching key milestones and progressing towards
successful delivery of the project.
ASKAP Antennas
The ASKAP antenna contract production readiness review was successfully completed on time, including a full and complete fi nite element analysis conducted by the contractor CETC54 to CSIRO specifi cations. The factory, site and commissioning plan is fully drafted and factory acceptance testing at CETC54 is on schedule for late August 2009. A life-size, timber model of the ASKAP antennas (known as ‘SAPKAP’) has been constructed and is being used to inform the design and location of the antenna systems and integration.
ASKAP Analog Systems
The project design review panel met and found that the designs and prototypes for the phased array feed are well engineered and the analog systems are on track to meet the high-level instrument science goals. The back plane layout is nearing completion, and the digital pin confi guration has been optimized for easy routing of the 50-ohm differential and JTAG diagnostic lines.
ASKAP Digital Systems
The digital systems hardware has been produced on schedule and budget, and prototypes of this hardware have been designed and peer reviewed. The manufacture and assembly of printed circuit boards has commenced with prototypes of all six major boards expected during July 2009. Two of these boards have already arrived and are now under test. Firmware for control and monitoring has been written and demonstrated to work. The digital signal processing and communication fi rmware (which includes a coarse fi lter bank and 10Gbps communications for the antennas) is currently in development.
ASKAP Computing
Expressions of interest from industry have been sought for the development of a prototype single digital backend computing system and evaluations will be completed by the end of June 2009. Design of the ASKAP scheduling block, which will be used at all levels of the data fl ow process, has started. The USB2SPI EPICS driver is almost complete and ready to be tested, and the fi rst spectral line cube has been obtained from the imaging software.
Designs for the internal antenna electrical distribution, switchboard and control systems have been produced. Two sets of serial peripheral interface modules have been assembled and tested: one set will be integrated into the Parkes 12m antenna testbed (used for testing all major systems being developed for ASKAP) and the other will be used for testing under EPICS. New complex programmable logic device code means that the ROACH can now be programmed, a signifi cant development given the complexity of the card.
> Timeline for the development and deployment of ASKAP.
ASKAP technical update.indd 3-4ASKAP technical update.indd 3-4 12/6/09 4:42:23 PM12/6/09 4:42:23 PM
the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
ASKAP Data and Signal Transport
For Further Information
Contact: Gabby Russell
CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility
Email: [email protected]
ASKAP project website: www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap
Australia Telescope National Facility June 2009
ASKAP Technical Update
The ASKAP Technical Update contains a brief summary of recent science and
technical developments related to the Australian SKA Pathfi nder (ASKAP) project.
It documents, at a top level, recent developments and milestones reached by core
CSIRO ASKAP project teams. This, the inaugural edition, also includes information on
the ASKAP project structure, management, system engineering, team experience and
overall project impact.
The ASKAP Technical Update is regularly updated and posted online at
www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap.
Project Structure and Management
ASKAP is an innovative, aggressive project to deliver a world-class radio telescope as part of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility. Given the level of new technology to be incorporated, the project is managed as a ‘spiral development’ allowing those elements which have a lesser degree of risk to proceed while allowing the maximum time for development of the less mature elements. This necessarily means that at a given point in time there are research, development and production activities underway.
The project is structured into Integrated Project Teams (IPTs) along technical and management lines but with a motivated System Engineering, Integration and Commissioning IPT to keep the focus on the overall system. Along with key support staff, the ASKAP Project Offi ce is staffed by a Director, Lead Manager, Business and Enterprise Development Manager, Project Scientist, Project Engineer, System Scientist and System Engineer.
The project conducts regular reviews with international experts in their domain. Over the past 15 months, ASKAP has been presented to 11 external project reviews (Governmental, Enterprise, Industry and Technical), three external oversight committees for the development and validation of the
science case and draft user access policy, as well as four CSIRO ATNF project review board meetings. In this period, over 40 reviewers from 25 different institutions (nine in Australia) and six different countries have been involved.
System Engineering
CSIRO ATNF is the prime system integrator, leveraging industry input, design and contracts to produce the most cost-effective instrument. Radio astronomy instrumentation, systems and operations is our core business and CSIRO ATNF is a world leader in this fi eld. A detailed system analysis in the early R&D phase has led ASKAP to the existing design incorporating 12-metre
prime-focus, three-axis antennas with an f/D of 0.5 and phased array feeds with a fi eld-of-view of about 30 square degrees. The optimisation is a function of time, as the cost of the digital electronics and energy per operation decreases and the design projects forward to the appropriate time frame.
The project is being deployed in a remote outback area in the Murchison region of Western Australia, making reliability and maintainability key elements in the deployment of ASKAP. The life cycle cost of ownership is the design metric but within a total cost envelope for construction, which does provide a tension in design trade-offs. Energy is another key
> Artist’s impression of ASKAP at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO). Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions. Design data provided by CSIRO.
ASKAP MRO Related Activities
The request for tender for design work at Boolardy Homestead has been completed with a company selected to perform the work. Requests for tender for the remainder of the MRO infrastructure work will appear in June 2009. Preparation for the Murchison Widefi eld Array has continued with installation of upgraded beamformers and antenna tile cables, and implementation of remote monitoring and control of the generator. Detailed planning for the deployment of the PAPER (Precision Array to Probe Epoch of Reionization) Experiment at the MRO in September 2009 is also well underway.
ASKAP System Engineering, Integration and Commissioning
An interdisciplinary summit has been held to survey the overall picture of ASKAP calibration strategies from instrument end-to-end. The labelling and identifying scheme to be used for all ASKAP modules and printed circuit boards has been determined, and the fi rst two of four prototype shielded cabinets have been delivered.
ASKAP Science and User Policy
Presentations on ASKAP have been given at the Joint European National Astronomy Meeting, Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, University of Oxford, and the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand Annual Meeting. The terms of reference for the ASKAP Survey Science Project Assignment Committee have been completed. Thirty-eight expressions of interest for ASKAP Survey Science Projects have been received (the fi nal proposals are due by 15 June), representing a total requested telescope observing time of over 24 years.
SKA Related Activities
CSIRO representatives attended a meeting on PrepSKA WP3 (Site Characterisation) activities, held in Manchester, where it was agreed that the sensitive radio frequency interference monitoring of the core candidate SKA sites should not be contaminated with noise from precursor construction activity. ASKAP domain specialist staff have recently participated in several international teleconferences organised by the SKA Project Development Offi ce.
ASKAP technical update.indd 1-2ASKAP technical update.indd 1-2 12/6/09 4:42:22 PM12/6/09 4:42:22 PM