Preparing AARTFAAC hardware for six additional LOFAR stations

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Currently in AARTFAAC, data is correlated from all dipoles in six LOFAR stations. The total number of signals that are correlated is 576. In 2015 this will be extended by a factor of two, to 1176 signals, by using dipole data of six additional stations.

The hardware required for that consists of URI boards (to tap off LOFAR data), UniBoards (to re-order data before correlation) and GPU machines (to correlate data). As is shown in the picture above, the URI boards (designed by Gijs Schoonderbeek) are mounted in their casings by Sjouke Zwier and Sieds Damstra to make them ready for deployment in the field. Furthermore Anne Koster modified ~ 200 cables for the additional stations. These cables replace the LOFAR ring cables in between the LOFAR RSP boards and are connected to the URI boards. On the URI boards the ring for LOFAR is re-constructed and the data is copied.

Sieds is from the Radio group and Anne from the Technical Support group. We would like to thank them both for supporting the Digital and Embedded Signal Processing Group in these busy times!