Digital Complex Correlator for a C-band Polarimetry survey

Abstract

The international Galactic Emission Mapping project aims to map and characterize the polarization field of the Milky Way. In Portugal it will cartograph the C-band sky polarized emission of the Northern Hemisphere and provide templates for map calibration and foreground control of microwave space probes like ESA Planck Surveyor mission. The receiver system is equipped with a novel receiver with a full digital back-end using an Altera Field Programmable Gate Array, having a very favorable cost/performance relation. This new digital backend comprises a base-band complex cross-correlator outputting the four Stokes parameters of the incoming polarized radiation. In this document we describe the design and implementation of the complex correlator using COTS components and a processing FPGA, detailing the method applied in the several algorithm stages and suitable for large sky area surveys.

15 pages, 10 figures; submitted to Experimental Astronomy, Springer

References in corpus (8)

• Three Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Polarization Analysis
• Detection of Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background using DASI
• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Bayesian Estimation of CMB Polarization Maps
• Measuring Polarization with DASI
• CMB Observations with a Compact Heterogeneous 150 GHz Interferometer in Chile
• Site Evaluation and RFI spectrum measurements in Portugal at the frequency range 0.408-10 GHz for a GEM polarized galactic radio emission experiment
• Design of an IF section for a Galactic Emission Mapping experiment
• Design of an IF section for C band polarimetry

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The C-Band All-Sky Survey (C-BASS): Design and implementation of the northern receiver
• A 5 GHz LNA for a Radio-Astronomy Experiment