, Posters
The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) has several telescopes whose radio frequency and digital subsystems are currently undergoing (or have recently completed) major upgrades, enabling new science via expanded capabilities in bandwidth and frequency resolution. Driven by science observation requirements and the radio frequency interference (RFI) environment each telescope will produce upwards of 400 MB/s of spectral data during long-running observations (on the order of petabytes every year). This high volume of data requires new infrastructure and techniques in the pre-processing, archiving and distributing pipeline as well as re-thinking some existing paradigms. Before sending data off-site for archiving and distribution, we aim to perform real-time data-reduction by automatically removing RFI using a machine-learning (ML) based spectral kurtosis estimator. This new approach will both significantly reduce the volume of archived data and reduce the effort of individual scientists in removing the RFI by hand. Here we discuss the current status of the data pipeline and its ongoing development.
Dustin Lagoy is a researcher at the Dominion Radio Astronomy Observatory in Penticton, British Columbia. He focuses on software development for processing and distributing high-volume radio telescope data, as well as telescope control and digital systems. Before working in radio astronomy he developed hardware and algorithms for airborne and space-based remote-sensing radar systems at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and the University of Massachusetts.