The Signal Processing Firmware for the Low Frequency Aperture Array

Abstract

The signal processing firmware that has been developed for the Low Frequency Aperture Array component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is described. The firmware is implemented on a dual FPGA board, that is capable of processing the streams from 16 dual polarization antennas. Data processing includes channelization of the sampled data for each antenna, correction for instrumental response and for geometric delays and formation of one or more beams by combining the aligned streams. The channelizer uses an oversampling polyphase filterbank architecture, allowing a frequency continuous processing of the input signal without discontinuities between spectral channels. Each board processes the streams from 16 antennas, as part of larger beamforming system, linked by standard Ethernet interconnections. These are envisaged to be 8192 of these signal processing platforms in the first phase of the SKA so particular attention has been devoted to ensure the design is low cost and low power.