Deliverable 2.7 Technical Workshop 3
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H2020 Grant Agreement No. 730562 – RadioNet PROJECT TITLE: Advanced Radio Astronomy in Europe STARTING DATE 01/01/2017 DURATION: 48 months CALL IDENTIFIER: H2020-INFRAIA-2016-1 TOPIC: INFRAIA-01-2016-2017 Integrating Activities for Advanced Communities Deliverable 2.7 Technical Workshop 3 Due date of deliverable: 2020-07-31 2020-10-01 Actual submission date: MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR Leading Partner: FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV (MPG) H2020-INFRAIA-2016-2017/H2020-INFRAIA-2016-1 Page 2 of 18 Document information Document name: Technical Workshop 3 Type Report WP WP2 – Dissemination Version date: 2020-10-01 Authors (Institutes) Reinhard Keller (MPG) Dissemination Level Dissemination Level PU Public X PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services) Index 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3 2 Technical Workshop 3 .................................................................................................................. 3 2.1 Scientific Summary ................................................................................................................ 3 2.2 Agenda .................................................................................................................................. 5 2.3 Participants ............................................................................................................................ 8 3 Summary and Impact .................................................................................................................. 18 4 RadioNet contribution ................................................................................................................. 18 5 Publications ................................................................................................................................ 18 RadioNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730562 H2020-INFRAIA-2016-2017/H2020-INFRAIA-2016-1 Page 3 of 18 1 Introduction This Networking Activity – Technical dissemination - concentrates mainly on organization of a series of technical workshops. A special focus is on the technical achievements and progress of the JRAs in this project in order to disseminate these results within the community. The main objective is to exchange ideas and new directions, and to attract the interest of researchers and industrial engineers in related fields to collaborate in the development of Radio Astronomy as well as industry applications with the aim to transfer knowledge in both directions. 2 Technical Workshop 3 2.1 Scientific Summary Despite the Corona virus crisis, a RadioNet Technical Dissemination Workshop on Future trends in Radio Astronomy instrumentation took place on 21-22 September 2020 as a virtual event. The workshop was organized by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn (Germany): https://events.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/indico/event/154/ This meeting was the last in a series of technical workshops under the umbrella of RadioNet combining several aspects of engineering and operational issues at radio observatories all over Europe and beyond. It provided the unique opportunity to cross border the different communities to see what ‘the others’ are doing and planning and enhance communication between engineers, scientists and operators. The Workshop continued a very successful series of engineering workshops and telescope operation - oriented meetings organized within the Sixth and Seventh Framework Programme. Engineers and scientists working at various observatories to get and keep their radio telescopes running presented their interesting projects in an oral presentation tailored to a virtual presentation. Due to purely virtual format of the workshop, there were no poster presentations. SOME TOPICS OF THE WORKSHOP • Luca Stringetti described the organization of the SKA and the role to handle projects towards a SKA prototype. Budget is 20MEUR per year, 1MEUR for each project. • Christophe Rissacher presented the development plan and timeline to get NOEMA upgraded to 23 Antennas in two years. Many components are currently under development in the range from 70 to 400 GHz. A lot of effort is done to keep the two facilities up to date. • Alber-Jan Boonstra outlined upgrade for LOFAR i.e. dual band observations and distributing clock signals for stations in the Netherlands. The latter strengthens science especial in the low band due to atmospheric disturbances at low frequencies. In the discussion the timing issue played an imported role. White Rabbit will be the solution. • Walter Brisken resumed the next generation on VLBA Backends based on a new developed board replacing the RBDE. Taking the experience of this into account a better concept had been developed and deployment is planed until 2024. RadioNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730562 H2020-INFRAIA-2016-2017/H2020-INFRAIA-2016-1 Page 4 of 18 • Grant Hampson showed how COTS components can help radio astronomy coming faster and cheaper to operation. With the example of SKA low he suggested a system with ePCI cards. In his second talk he demonstrated the corresponding receiver for SKA low designed with complex RFSoC (Radio Frequency System on Chip). A lot of effort had to be put into shielding and filtering of the receiver board. • Paul Bowen demonstrated a VLBI system for a historic telescope composed completely from COTS components. GNU radio software was used to configure the SDR based formatter. Impressive results were demonstrated via real VLBI measurements. • Alessandro Orfei showed details of a 19-beam receiver for the SRT. The design was driven also from sun observation requirements, which needs very high dynamic range. Additionally, he explained the RF infrastructure of the SRT and the problems that come with it. This is coming with a bunch of new high frequency and wideband receivers financed via national funding. • Louise Mousset´s talk focused on polarized bolometric measurement of CMB. Using an array of passive and switchable 'feed through' horns (receive horns at input and transmit horns towards the bolometer array) interferometry can be used for exact calibration. • Sabrina Realini demonstrated a precise simulation of an existing telescope for q- and W-band multi pixel CMB observations. • Pablo Torne demonstrated existing submm/mm-wave bolometer cameras for pulsar observations. In this band a new and very sensitive bunch of observations are possible to fill this wavelength gap up to high-energy observations. • Alan Roy presented fundamental investigations for using solar thermal power plants for radio astronomy. These facilities are not in use by night and provide huge collecting areas that could be used for radio astronomy by night. This talk invoked great interest in the community and plenty of questions arose. • The talk by Pietro Bolli pointed out some aspects of installing 3-frequency receivers in existing telescopes. • Andrei Lobanov described what to do with such a receiver in VLBI. Frequency-phase transfer can improve VLBI resolution by lowering phase noise dramatically and should be performed wherever it's possible. • Joseph Nsor showed the activities of his institute to get a decommissioned dish antenna converted into a working VLBI radio telescope. • Olaf Wuknitz derived a method to resolve objects by lensing at massive objects. He suggested observing big areas of sky to find repeated FRBs for exact timing as well as distances. Therefore, big phased arrays would be appropriate. A new instrument tailored for that purpose would be better than existing systems. • Harariharan Krishnan outlined a new low frequency real time imaging instrument that could meet the needs of the talk before. RadioNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730562 H2020-INFRAIA-2016-2017/H2020-INFRAIA-2016-1 Page 5 of 18 2.2 Agenda Monday afternoon, Sep 21st, 2020 12.00 Dial in (Registration) Welcome and organization 12.30 Dr. Reinhard Keller – MPIfR, Germany Director’s welcome address 12.40 Prof. Dr. Anton Zensus – Director at MPIfR and RadioNet Coordinator Session 1 Chair: Dr. Alessandro Navarrini SKA1 Observatory Development Plan 13.00 Mr. Luca Stringhetti – SKA Organization, UK IRAM telescope instrumentation overview and future plans 13.25 Dr. Christophe Risacher, IRAM, France LOFAR2.0: extending LOFAR observational capabilities for the coming decade 13.50 Dr. Albert-Jan Boonstra, ASTRON, The Netherlands The VLBA New Digital Architecture 14.15 Dr. Walter Brisken – NRAO, USA 14.40 Online group photo 14.55 Coffee break Session 2 Chair: Dr. Reinhard Keller The Effelsberg Direct Digitization Project 15.10 Dr. Tobias Winchen, MPIfR, Germany BRAND EVN Broadband Receiver - a technological challenge 15.35 Dr. Gino Tuccari, MPIfR, Germany Developing Digital Receiver for Radio Astronomy Receiver using RFSoC 16.00 Dr. Chao Liu, Oxford University, UK Smart Ambient-Temperature Very Low Noise LNAs for Radio Astronomy Arrays 16.25 Prof. Sander Weinreb, Caltech, USA 16.50 Trivia event RadioNet has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon