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Correlator Configurations

The correlator is composed of four independent boards, each a full correlator in its own right. One board can observe both polarizations, or just one of the two available from the chosen receiver, at a bandwidth and resolution that is set independently for each board. The signal may be three-level, three-level interleaved, or nine-level sampled. At bandwidths of 12.5 MHz or less, the signal to noise from three-level spectra can be improved by oversampling (i.e. using double-Nyquist sampling). The choice of any of these configurations is set by the ``lagsam'' variable in the Table , which is specified for each correlator board as an argument to the cor_lagc command.

Table: Correlator Configurations for the 4 Digital Boards
``lagsam'' Configuration MaxBW
per sbc
sbc/Pol Boards
used
Lags/sbc
(best resn at 1420 MHz)
0 9-level, A pol. 25 MHz 2 4 2048/(2.6 km/s)
1 9-level, B pol. 25 MHz 2 4 2048/(2.6 km/s)
2 DON'T USE -- -- -- --
3 DON'T USE -- -- -- --
4 DON'T USE -- -- -- --
5 3-level A \& B pol. 25 MHz 4 4 2048/(2.6 km/s)
6 3-level interleav. A 50 MHz 2 4 4096/(2.6 km/s)
7 3-level interleav. B 50 MHz 2 4 4096/(2.6 km/s)
8 3-level interl. A \& B 50 MHz 4 4 2048/(5.2 km/s)
9 9-level A \& B pol. 25 MHz 4 4 1024/(5.2 km/s)
0 3-level polarization 25 MHz 4 4 2048/(2.6 km/s)

Double-Nyquist sampling can be used with all configurations, except interleaved, provided the bandwidth is less than or equal to 12.5 MHz. However, its use decreases the maximum bandwidth by a factor of two. 3-level, double-Nyquist, 12.5 MHz bw and below give 4 sub-bands with better resolution than the corresponding 9-level configuration.

9-level operation achieves 98\% of the signal-to-noise of analog correlation whereas 3-level sampling achieves 81\%. One advantage of 9-level sampling is to limit the effects of RFI (usually) to just a few channels.