The ALMA telescope is composed of 66 high precision antennas, each antenna having 8 high bandwidth digitizers (4Gsamples/Second). It is a critical task to determine the well functioning of those digitizers prior to starting a round of observations. Since observation time is a valuable resource, it is germane that a tool be developed which can provide a quick and reliable answer regarding the digitizer status. Currently the digitizer output statistics are measured by using comparators and counters. This method introduced uncertainties due to the low amount of integration, in addition to going through all the possible states for all available digitizer time which all resulted in the antennas taking a considerable amount of time. In order to avoid the aforementioned described problems, a new method based on correlator resources is hereby presented.

Date Published: 23 July 2014
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 9153, Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VII, 91532K (23 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2056392

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9153:
Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VII
Wayne S. Holland; Jonas Zmuidzinas, Editor(s)