Digital Front-End Development for ALMA

• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3240315
• Publication Date: 2019-06-01
• Authors: A. Baryshev
• Keywords: Zenodo community almadevel2019; 7. Clean energy

Improvement of ALMA observatory requires increase bandwidth, sensitivity and number antennas. All these improvements will meet a bottleneck if digital system is not addressed. Currently 2 bit digitizer supporting <8 GHz bandwidth per polarization employed limiting correlation efficiency at 88%. Implementation downconverter substantially limits line searches compared to limit it's extendable. We have initiated study on possible implementation front-end which includes modular digitizer, processing antenna TCP/IP optical fiber data transfer. report requirements, trade-offs analyze its impact current as well future one. review technology performance available in near future. Significant improvement can be realized moderate cost.