LOFAR status meeting :: 10 March 2010
Notes
Roll Out
The main update to report during the last two weeks is that all stations which are connected by fibres are now also connected to the Central Systems. Furthermore we are waiting for the field conditions to improve in order to access the fields again.
Stations
At the end of last week new station firmware was tested (v6.2) on two single stations and subsequently rolled out to all Dutch stations. Unfortunately, during the early days of the week, we noticed some problems with this new firmware and decided to roll all Dutch stations back to the latest stable version.
CEP
During the last week, some problems were found in the data processing. If an IO-node at CEP (which forwards data to the BG) stops accepting data, then after some time the stations that are connected to that IO-node start broadcasting through the network trying to find another receptor for their data. That, however, causes heavy network congestion to the point where communication with the BG becomes almost impossible.
The solution to this problem is to have the stations stop sending data as soon as they detect that the data is not accepted anymore at the receiving side. This was implemented at the stations this week. A more robust solution involves a re-configuration of the switches at the station. That solution will be implemented at a later time (which means: not during a busy week)
The faulty IO-node at the CEP has been replaced.
Software
The Surveys KSP is having a workshop in Leiden all this week and will spend the last three days (Wed-Fri) conducting additional tests of the imaging pipeline.
"Busy Weeks"
This week (March 8 through 12) there is a Pulsar Busy Week.
After some initial problems, pulsar observations were successfully specified with SAS-MAC.
A test observation with 14 stations showed an improved S/N ratio.
More results will be presented at next week's Status Meeting.
Next week (March 15-19) a Control & Metadata busy week is planned.
The total observation process, from observation specification up to and including archiving the data, will be tested.