2-6 September 2024
CJD Bonn Castell
Europe/Berlin timezone
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Contribution

CJD Bonn Castell

RADIOBLOCKS impact for the EVN

Speakers

  • Dr. Giuseppe CIMO

Primary authors

Co-authors

Content

RADIOBLOCKS is a European Commission-funded project that aims to go beyond state-of-the-art technological solutions to increase the sensitivity, field of view and bandwidth of radio astronomy infrastructures. Although these developments address aspects for almost all radio astronomical infrastructures along the entire data chain, VLBI will benefit from their results and deliverables.

RADIOBLOCKS is divided into tasks that work on different parts of the signal chain. One task is dedicated to Novel Detectors and Components to address the developments of improved cryogenic LNAs and SiS mixers, among others. This will allow large bandwidths and simultaneous observations at different, largely separated frequencies to study the emission of sources at increased sensitivity. The Digital Receivers task will develop and demonstrate receivers that produce large data streams capable of RFI mitigation, including cryoPAFs and a prototype VLBI backend that will allow broadband and multi-frequency observations. Data Transport and Correlation is another important part of the signal chain: one task is therefore dedicated to processing the data produced by the new receiver systems. It will develop a collection of efficient, high-performance signal processing blocks using commercially available hardware accelerator platforms such as FPGAs, tensor core-enabled GPUs for correlations, and off-the-shelf Ethernet network switches for high-speed data transfer. The last block of the signal chain deals with the implementation of a generic Data Processing Tool Kit to handle the post-processing of large data streams. This includes fringe fitting, advanced data processing algorithms to handle data with sparse visibility and simulations to extend the EHT tools for cm-VLBI or study different SKA-VLBI observing scenarios.

In this talk, we will show the progress of RADIOBLOCKS after its first year and highlight the developments that will have an impact on the VLBI of the future.