Digital Receivers

This work package aims to improve on all the following technology areas: system temperature, bandwidth and field-of-view. It builds on the past development programs enabled by RadioNet, as well as the component developments conducted in WP2 - Novel Detectors and Components.

Common to achieving the goals is the deployment of state-of-the art digital technology. In order to be successful and cost effective, synergies between partners are utilized and the different types of commodity hardware (CPUs, FPGAs and GPUs) and combined with dedicated developments.

The aim is to derive a European technology toolbox that allows European astronomers to adapt and adopt technology solutions for a wide range of instruments, from small and large single dish telescopes to continental and global homogeneous and heterogeneous dish arrays that include many of the same single dish telescopes. In order to do so, we develop and test different implementations of the main tasks related to digitization. This will allow us to create a set of proven technology solution that can be adapted across the diverse range of high-class infrastructure supported by this application.

The digital receivers to be developed and demonstrated in WP3 also have in common that they produce large volumes of data at high data rates. It is therefore of utmost importance to process these data to a large extent online while crucial signal properties can still be utilized and modified at the basic signal level (such as beamforming or RFI mitigation).