Real-time signal processor for pulsar studies |
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| Authors: | P S Ramkumar A A Deshpande |
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| Institution: | (1) Raman Research Institute, C. V.Raman Avenue, 560 080 Bangalore, India;(2) Present address: Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd, No. 65, 13th cross, III phase, JP Nagar, 560 078 Bangalore |
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| Abstract: | This paper describes the design, tests and preliminary results of a real-time parallel signal processor built to aid a wide
variety of pulsar observations. The signal processor reduces the distortions caused by the effects of dispersion, Faraday
rotation, doppler acceleration and parallactic angle variations, at a sustained data rate of 32 Msamples/sec. It also folds
the pulses coherently over the period and integrates adjacent samples in time and frequency to enhance the signal-to-noise
ratio. The resulting data are recorded for further off-line analysis of the characteristics of pulsars and the intervening
medium. The signal processing for analysis of pulsar signals is quite complex, imposing the need for a high computational
throughput, typically of the order of a Giga operations per second (GOPS). Conventionally, the high computational demand restricts
the flexibility to handle only a few types of pulsar observations. This instrument is designed to handle a wide variety of
Pulsar observations with the Giant Metre Wave Radio Telescope (GMRT), and is flexible enough to be used in many other high-speed,
signal processing applications. The technology used includes field-programmable-gate-array(FPGA) based data/code routing interfaces,
PC-AT based control, diagnostics and data acquisition, digital signal processor (DSP) chip based parallel processing nodes
and C language based control software and DSP-assembly programs for signal processing. The architecture and the software implementation
of the parallel processor are fine-tuned to realize about 60 MOPS per DSP node and a multiple-instruction-multiple-data (MIMD)
capability. |
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| Keywords: | Stars: neutron pulsars interstellar medium: dispersion Faraday rotation telescope: GMRT instrumentation |
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