The Murchison Widefield Array Correlator

Abstract

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Precursor. The telescope is located at the Murchison Radio--astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia (WA). The MWA consists of 4096 dipoles arranged into 128 dual polarisation aperture arrays forming a connected element interferometer that cross-correlates signals from all 256 inputs. A hybrid approach to the correlation task is employed, with some processing stages being performed by bespoke hardware, based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and others by Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) housed in general purpose rack mounted servers. The correlation capability required is approximately 8 TFLOPS (Tera FLoating point Operations Per Second). The MWA has commenced operations and the correlator is generating 8.3 TB/day of correlation products, that are subsequently transferred 700 km from the MRO to Perth (WA) in real-time for storage and offline processing. In this paper we outline the correlator design, signal path, and processing elements and present the data format for the internal and external interfaces.

17 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in PASA. Some figures altered to meet astro-ph submission requirements

References in corpus (8)

• The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies
• The Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization: 8 Station Results
• The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview
• Science with the Murchison Widefield Array
• The Murchison Widefield Array Commissioning Survey: A Low-Frequency Catalogue of 14,110 Compact Radio Sources over 6,100 Square Degrees
• On the detection and tracking of space debris using the Murchison Widefield Array. I. Simulations and test observations demonstrate feasibility
• The giant lobes of Centaurus A observed at 118 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array
• A GPU based real-time software correlation system for the Murchison Widefield Array prototype

Cited by in corpus (32)

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• The Murchison Widefield Array 21 cm Power Spectrum Analysis Methodology
• Characterization of a Low-Frequency Radio Astronomy Prototype Array in Western Australia
• The challenges of low-frequency radio polarimetry: lessons from the Murchison Widefield Array
• A new MWA limit on the 21 cm Power Spectrum at Redshifts $\sim$ 13 $-$ 17
• Calibration and Stokes Imaging with Full Embedded Element Primary Beam Model for the Murchison Widefield Array
• A search for Fast Radio Bursts at low frequencies with Murchison Widefield Array high time resolution imaging
• Scintillation arcs in low-frequency observations of the timing-array millisecond pulsar J0437-4715
• Interplanetary Scintillation studies with the Murchison Wide-field Array II: Properties of sub-arcsecond compact sources at low radio frequencies
• Cobalt: A GPU-based correlator and beamformer for LOFAR
• Interplanetary Scintillation with the Murchison Widefield Array I: A sub-arcsecond Survey over 900 square degrees at 79 and 158 MHz
• Spectral Flattening at Low Frequencies in Crab Giant Pulses
• PUMA: The Positional Update and Matching Algorithm
• Type III Solar Radio Burst Source Region Splitting Due to a Quasi-Separatrix Layer
• 4D Data Cubes from Radio-Interferometric Spectroscopic Snapshot Imaging
• The Low-Frequency Solar Corona in Circular Polarization
• Densities Probed by Coronal Type III Radio Burst Imaging
• Faraday rotation at low frequencies: magnetoionic material of the large FRII radio galaxy PKS J0636-2036
• Unsupervised generation of high dynamic range solar images: A novel algorithm for self-calibration of interferometry data
• Observations of Low-Frequency Radio Emission from Millisecond Pulsars and Multipath Propagation in the Interstellar Medium
• Probing pulsar scattering between 120 and 280 MHz with the MWA
• The Engineering Development Array: A low frequency radio telescope utilising SKA precursor technology
• A Serendipitous MWA Search for Narrow-band and Broad-band Low Frequency Radio Transmissions from 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua
• MWA Tied-Array Processing I: Calibration and Beamformation
• MWAX: A New Correlator for the Murchison Widefield Array
• A GPU Spatial Processing System for CHIME
• An Ultra-High Time Resolution Cosmic Ray Detection Mode for the Murchison Widefield Array
• Single-pulse analysis and average emission characteristics of PSR J1820-0427 from observations made with the MWA and uGMRT
• BLINK: an End-To-End GPU High Time Resolution Imaging Pipeline for Fast Radio Burst Searches with the Murchison Widefield Array