Whats All That Noise? High Speed Recording for Radio Astronomy from Conduant

Working at Sarsen Technology exposes us to all kinds of exciting industries, few more exciting (in my opinion!) than space exploration.

Many of our manufacturers support applications outside our little earthly bubble, or are involved with projects that aim to push the boundaries of discovery further than ever before.

Conduant Corp have been working with MIT Haystack Observatory on a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) solution.
Haystack Observatory is an interdisciplinary research centre of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) focused on radio astronomy, geodesy, and atmospheric science. MIT Haystack Observatory's project was to define and develop the next generation recording and playback system (known as Mark V) for use among the world's VLBI radio astronomy community.

Radio astronomy/Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) — Using multiple antennas to collect data from space to study other galaxies and phenomena such as black holes, quasars and pulsars.

Traditionally, the VLBI community has used large, reel-to-reel tape systems for recording and playback. These tape-based systems were not capable of high-speed recording, and maintenance costs continued to rise. Tape is difficult to search (i.e., no instant random access ability, requires rewinding) has become more expensive than disk. MIT concluded that the next generation of VLBI data systems should be based on commercial off-the-shelf components (COTS) using magnetic disk technology and standard IDE hard disk drives.

Conduant solution

The ideal solution for MIT combined low cost drives and a hardware configuration optimized for sustained high-speed recording. In early 2001, using an existing StreamStor® system, MIT put together and successfully demonstrated an ultra-fast, disk-based solution in less than two months costing less than one-tenth of existing tape-based system. 

 

 The Mark 5 VLBI data system, jointly developed by Haystack Observatory and Conduant Corporation, records data on removable magnetic-disk modules at sustained data rates to 1 Gbps. The system can also be used to move VLBI data over high-speed global networks directly from telescopes to correlators around the world. 

Today, MIT is using the latest StreamStor® technology to record data continuously, for days at a time, at sustained rates of 1 GB/s.

"StreamStor® has a lot of potential applications in other disciplines, too. Military, intelligence, as well as the radio noise from distant galaxies."
- Dr. Alan Whitney of MIT Haystack Observatory