Variable Correlation Digital Noise Source on FPGA — A Versatile Tool for Debugging Radio Telescope Backends

Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation

article

Kaushal D. Buch¹  Yashwant Gupta¹  B. Ajith Kumar¹ 

[1] National Centre for Radio Astrophysics

关键词: FPGA;    noise source;    variable correlation;    radio telescope;    correlator;   

DOI  :  10.1142/S225117171450007X

学科分类：天文学(综合)

来源: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

【 摘 要 】

Contemporary wideband radio telescope backends are generally developed on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) or hybrid (FPGA+GPU) platforms. One of the challenges faced while developing such instruments is the functional verification of the signal processing backend at various stages of development. In the case of an interferometer or pulsar backend, the typical requirement is for one independent noise source per input, with provision for a common, correlated signal component across all the inputs, with controllable level of correlation. This paper describes the design of a FPGA-based variable correlation Digital Noise Source (DNS), and its applications to built-in testing and debugging of correlators and beamformers. This DNS uses the Central Limit Theorem-based approach for generation of Gaussian noise, and the architecture is optimized for resource requirements and ease of integration with existing signal processing blocks on FPGA.

【 授权许可】

Unknown