Development of a Flexible Wideband Digital Backend for Radio Interferometry - A Consortium Proposal

Northeast Radio Observatory Corp, Westford MA

Investigators

Abstract

AST-0521233/Whitney, MIT Modern high speed analog-to-digital converters and Floating Point Gate Array-based architectures will be used to develop a versatile new Very Long Baseline Interferometry digital backend system that will bring dramatic improvements to the practice of Very Long Baseline Interferometry. The development program will: replace nearly a rack full of current analog backend equipment; interface easily to the receiver system of almost any radio telescope in the world; process 512 MHz of bandwidth from each of two inputs (for example, both polarizations of a signal) in the range 100 MHz to 12 GHz; extend the output data rate from 1 gigabit per second to 4 gigabits per second; interface directly to the new generation of high-data-rate Very Long Baseline Interferometry data systems, including the Mark 5; and cost approximately 5% of the current backend system.