Parkes Spectrometer, Full Stokes Version

Peter McMahon created a very capable pulsar data acquision based on the U.C. Berkeley blocks. His design was amoung the first to use the 10 GigaBit ethernet communications blocks.

There are several versions of the design that have different configuration requirements. In addition, the IBOBs are connected to different host computers with different configuration parameters.

  • Beef
  • Tofu
  • Cicada2

Summer 2008

During the summer of 2008, Marc Eimer, Duncan Lorimer and Glen Langston assembled a parspec design that obtained data from the NRAO 43m Telescope and record data in the pulsar spectrometer mode. Paul Demorest, Scott Ransom, John Ford, Randy McCullogh and Jason Ray made many valuable contributions to the system setup and advice on data acquisition and networking.

The PARSPEC design uses a U.C. Berkeley IBob board for input.

Marc Eimer and Glen Langston set up the Parspec design with input from the Fake Pulsar. These tests went well, but there were some questions concerning the test pulsar outputs. Mark has written a test report.

Fall 2008

After the end of summer 2008, the computer configuration was radically changed, and we lost the ability to use the GUI with the parspec design. On 2008 December 16, Vlad Kondratiev, Paul Demorest and Glen Langston revised the software for communications between the IBOB and the computer tofu.gb.nrao.edu.

We had to make a number of changes to a number of scripts. These changes are tabulated below:

  • TOFU replaces BEEF as data acquisition computer. Edited scripts to reference new executable location.
    • Executable is /data/scratch/glangsto/parspec/gui
  • Data acquisition directory: /data/scratch/glangsto/parspec


parspecGui.gif parspecStokes4.gif
Parspec GUI Monitor Plot of Stokes I, Q, U and V
parspecIbob.gif artificialPulsarPrepfold.gif
IBOB commands in telnet session Folded data taken with Parspec Stokes using the Artificial (Fake) pulsar
Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
McMahon-Thesis-25Jul2008.pdfpdf McMahon-Thesis-25Jul2008.pdf manage 12 MB 2008-11-06 - 16:53 GlenLangston Pulsar Spectrometer for Ibob
ParkesUserGuide.pdfpdf ParkesUserGuide.pdf manage 451 K 2008-12-16 - 17:21 GlenLangston  
Test_Results.docdoc Test_Results.doc manage 830 K 2008-12-16 - 17:20 GlenLangston Marc Eimer report on Parspec Tests (August 2008)
artificialPulsarPrepfold.gifgif artificialPulsarPrepfold.gif manage 102 K 2008-12-17 - 16:11 GlenLangston parspec folded output from Fake Pulsar
parkes200MHz08May26.mdlmdl parkes200MHz08May26.mdl manage 2 MB 2008-12-17 - 09:09 GlenLangston Simulink model of stokes 512 channel Spectrometer
parspec08may26.pdfpdf parspec08may26.pdf manage 43 K 2008-12-17 - 09:10 GlenLangston layout of parspec stokes design
parspecGui.gifgif parspecGui.gif manage 39 K 2008-12-17 - 15:53 GlenLangston Image of Parspec GUI
parspecIbob.gifgif parspecIbob.gif manage 16 K 2008-12-17 - 15:54 GlenLangston IBOB telnet sesssion
parspecStokes4.gifgif parspecStokes4.gif manage 40 K 2008-12-17 - 15:56 GlenLangston Monitor Plot
Topic revision: r6 - 2009-10-19, CarolynWhite
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