A Digital-Receiver for the Murchison Widefield Array
Abstract
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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1502.05015,
title = {A Digital-Receiver for the Murchison Widefield Array},
author = {Thiagaraj Prabu and K. S. Srivani and D. Anish Roshi and P. A. Kamini and S. Madhavi and David Emrich and Brian Crosse and Andrew J. Williams and Mark Waterson and Avinash A. Deshpande and N. Udaya Shankar and Ravi Subrahmanyan and Frank H. Briggs and Robert F. Goeke and Steven J. Tingay and Melanie Johnston-Hollitt and Gopalakrishna M R and Edward H. Morgan and Joseph Pathikulangara and John D. Bunton and Grant Hampson and Christopher Williams and Stephen M. Ord and Randall B. Wayth and Deepak Kumar and Miguel F. Morales and Ludi deSouza and Eric Kratzenberg and D. Pallot and Russell McWhirter and Bryna J. Hazelton and Wayne Arcus and David G. Barnes and Gianni Bernardi and T. Booler and Judd D. Bowman and Roger J. Cappallo and Brian E. Corey and Lincoln J. Greenhill and David Herne and Jacqueline N. Hewitt and David L. Kaplan and Justin C. Kasper and Barton B. Kincaid and Ronald Koenig and Colin J. Lonsdale and Mervyn J. Lynch and Daniel A. Mitchell and Divya Oberoi and Ronald A. Remillard and Alan E. Rogers and Joseph E. Salah and Robert J. Sault and Jamie B. Stevens and S. E. Tremblay and Rachel L. Webster and Alan R. Whitney and Stuart B. Wyithe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.05015},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 7 figures