4. Technical Reports

4.1 Key Stone Project


Data Acquisition System (Hitoshi Kiuchi)

The local oscillator synthesizes the local frequency signal (500-1000 MHz : 10 kHz step) for the video converter. The measured phase noise is better than 3 deg, which is calculated according to the value of the measured Allan variance. Coherence loss caused by this phase instability is less than 0.04%. The local oscillator has now been fully developed and is in commercial use. The video converter converts windows in the IF signal input (500-1000 MHz) to video signals (0 - 32 MHz). The input interface unit samples the 16-channel (max.) video signal, and sends the sampled data to the data recorder following a time data block, and produces a data train of up to 256 Mbps. The format does not include a time code but only a digitized signal. It was designed to make the best use of the K-4 recorder's abilities at levels of up to 256 Mbps. The anti-aliasing filtering is made in analog (32 MHz), and sampling is carried out by an 8 bit A/D converter of 64 Msps. The quantization threshold level of the A/D converter is adjustable. After sampling, the 16 MHz, 8 MHz, etc. filtering and bit discriminations are accomplished by digital filter. The digital filter is good for producing excellent phase characteristics, and for reducing coherence loss. It is possible to select suitable coefficients for the digital filter, for example, the digital filter is used as a band pass filter during line observations. The configuration for one- and two-bit sampling is shown in the table. It is possible to support the Mark-III, the VLBA, and the VSOP data acquisition modes. This Input interface unit is adopted to the VSOP data acquisition sub-system.




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