UK teams awarded contract for SKA-Low signal processing system

BY DR HILARY KAY (THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER – UK SKA)

Teams from the University of Oxford and the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have been awarded a £3.4m (€3.8m) contract to provide firmware development and integration for the SKA-Low telescope’s signal processing system (SPS).

The SPS plays a complex and fundamental role in the telescope’s operation. After receiving the radio frequency signals from each of the 131,072 low-frequency antennas, it cleans and digitises the signals and combines them to form one or more “beams” from each station of antennas, before transporting the data to the Science Processing Centre in Perth.

Building on experience gained by the teams during the eight-year SKA detailed design phase, the contract will see the UK team grow with the initial appointment of three new engineers at the University of Oxford. They will deliver firmware for the cabinet and sub-rack management board, as well as the firmware for the 8,000+ tile processing modules which each digitise and convert the signals from 16 antennas. They will also provide the cabinet chassis and management board as well as the AC power distribution and cooling system.

“We are excited to contribute to what will become the largest digital phased array system in the world, at whose heart lies the most sophisticated signal processing algorithms implemented on cutting-edge technology supplied by UK industry,” says Dr Kristian Zarb Adami, who is leading the University of Oxford team.

The contract will run until December 2025, and will see the construction, installation and integration of a total of 12 SPS cabinets on the SKA-Low site.