Pulsar Instruments

Meeting in E1.08 on 26 Sep 2018, 13-14:00 hrs

Attending: Michael, David, Gregory, Henning, Kuo, Ramesh

A not-so-complete list of improvements

1. Meta data on PSRIX (ROACH1) data products. Receiver, BW are not correctly recorded. Solution is to move to PSRFITS where some of the parameters can be set correctly.
2. PSRFITS issues on beegfs. To check with Willem for a possible solution.
3. ROACH2 output has no proper header information - source/position etc. - fix this
4. Possibility to control the instruments via Obsinp.
5. Telescope data from multicast/broadcast? Put data in to a shared memory, so others can take look.
   1. broadcast may disappear in 2-3 yrs, and multicast is the way to go. In 2-3 yrs when control system is replaced
   2. The broadcast stream has incorrect data when the "new control system" is used.
   3. Check if multicast has sensible data. The multicast stream is not really in the spirit of a XML structure.
6. 10dB gain slope across the C+ bands - saturates parts of the spectrum and under-samples the higher end
   1. to be addressed in the attenuation/gain unit (proposal/requirements with Gundolf).
7. ROACH2 w/iADC and ROACH1 to operate in parallel
8. Check ROACH2 w/ interleaved ADCs if performance has improved with new chassis and calibration
9. Check ROACH2 w/ ADC in non-interleaved mode and compare with ROACH1 (after chassis modification)
   1. To test all four cores of the ADC to verify the performances of the cores