The Digital Signal Processing Platform for the Low Frequency Aperture Array: Preliminary Results on the Data Acquisition Unit

• Published in: Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation Vol. 6; no. 1
• Main Authors: Naldi, Giovanni, Mattana, Andrea, Pastore, Sandro, Alderighi, Monica, Zarb Adami, Kristian, Schillirò, Francesco, Aminaei, Amin, Baker, Jeremy, Belli, Carolina, Comoretto, Gianni, Chiarucci, Simone, Chiello, Riccardo, D’Angelo, Sergio, Dalle Mura, Gabriele, De Marco, Andrea, Halsall, Rob, Magro, Alessio, Monari, Jader, Roberts, Matt, Perini, Federico, Poloni, Marco, Pupillo, Giuseppe, Rusticelli, Simone, Schiaffino, Marco, Zaccaro, Emanuele
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company 01.03.2017; World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte., Ltd
• Subjects: Apertures; Arrays; Bandwidths; Beamforming; Broadband; Data acquisition; Data transmission; Digital signal processing; Digital signal processors; Digitization; Dual polarization (waves); Low frequencies; Signal processing; Special Topic on Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy; SKA; digital receiver; data acquisition; FPGA-based system
• ISSN: 2251-1717; 2251-1725
• DOI: 10.1142/S2251171716410142

A signal processing hardware platform has been developed for the Low Frequency Aperture Array component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The processing board, called an Analog Digital Unit (ADU), is able to acquire and digitize broadband (up to 500 MHz bandwidth) radio-frequency streams from 16 dual polarized antennas, channel the data streams and then combine them flexibly as part of a larger beamforming system. It is envisaged that there will be more than 8000 of these signal processing platforms in the first phase of the SKA, so particular attention has been devoted to ensure the design is low-cost and low-power. This paper describes the main features of the data acquisition unit of such a platform and presents preliminary results characterizing its performance.