Design and Performance of the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array Systems

Abstract

We report on the development, installation and operation of the first three of seven stations deployed at the ARIANNA site's pilot Hexagonal Radio Array in Antarctica. The primary goal of the ARIANNA project is to observe ultra-high energy (>100 PeV) cosmogenic neutrino signatures using a large array of autonomous stations each dispersed 1 km apart on the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf. Sensing radio emissions of 100 MHz to 1 GHz, each station in the array contains RF antennas, amplifiers, 1.92 G-sample/s, 850 MHz bandwidth signal acquisition circuitry, pattern-matching trigger capabilities, an embedded CPU, 32 GB of solid-state data storage, and long-distance wireless and satellite communications. Power is provided by the sun and LiFePO4 storage batteries, and the stations consume an average of 7W of power. Operation on solar power has resulted in >=58% per calendar-year live-time. The station's pattern-trigger capabilities reduce the trigger rates to a few milli-Hertz with 4-sigma thresholds while retaining good stability and high efficiency for neutrino signals. The timing resolution of the station has been found to be 0.049 ps, RMS, and the angular precision of event reconstructions of signals bounced off of the sea-ice interface of the Ross Ice Shelf ranged from 0.14 to 0.17 degrees. A new fully-synchronous 2+ G-sample/s, 1.5 GHz bandwidth 4-channel signal acquisition chip with deeper memory and flexible >600 MHz, <1 mV RMS sensitivity triggering has been designed and incorporated into a single-board data acquisition and control system that uses an average of only 1.7W of power. Along with updated amplifiers, these new systems are expected to be deployed during the 2014-2015 Austral summer to complete the Hexagonal Radio Array.

17 Page, 27 Figures, 1 Table

References in corpus (9)

• Sensitivity of the IceCube Detector to Astrophysical Sources of High Energy Muon Neutrinos
• The AMANDA Neutrino Telescope: Principle of Operation and First Results
• The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna Ultra-high Energy Neutrino Detector Design, Performance, and Sensitivity for 2006-2007 Balloon Flight
• A First Search for Cosmogenic Neutrinos with the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array
• Limits on the Ultra-High Energy Electron Neutrino Flux from the RICE Experiment
• A prototype station for ARIANNA: a detector for cosmic neutrinos
• Ross Ice Shelf in situ radio-frequency ice attenuation
• Time Domain Response of the ARIANNA Detector
• The SST Fully-Synchronous Multi-GHz Analog Waveform Recorder with Nyquist-Rate Bandwidth and Flexible Trigger Capabilities

Cited by in corpus (14)

• A First Search for Cosmogenic Neutrinos with the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array
• Radio detection of air showers with the ARIANNA experiment on the Ross Ice Shelf
• Targeting ultra-high energy neutrinos with the ARIANNA experiment
• Design and Performance of an Interferometric Trigger Array for Radio Detection of High-Energy Neutrinos
• Observation of classically `forbidden' electromagnetic wave propagation and implications for neutrino detection
• Improving sensitivity of the ARIANNA detector by rejecting thermal noise with deep learning
• The SST Fully-Synchronous Multi-GHz Analog Waveform Recorder with Nyquist-Rate Bandwidth and Flexible Trigger Capabilities
• Experimental tests of sub-surface reflectors as an explanation for the ANITA anomalous events
• The SST Multi-G-Sample/s Switched Capacitor Array Waveform Recorder with Flexible Trigger and Picosecond-Level Timing Accuracy
• Triboelectric Backgrounds to radio-based UHE Neutrino Exeperiments
• Performance of the ARIANNA Hexagonal Radio Array
• Acoustic Neutrino Detection In a Adriatic Multidisciplinary Observatory (ANDIAMO)
• Measurement of the real dielectric permittivity epsilon_r of glacial ice
• Design of the Second-Generation ARIANNA Ultra-High-Energy Neutrino Detector Systems