Development of the Back-End for the LLAMA Radiotelescope

J. BARKHOF; SANDRO VERNI; JUAN MARCHUETA; A. BARYSHEV; EMILIANO RASZTOCKY; DANILO ZANELLA; JULIÁN GALVÁN; FRANCO CIPOLLONE; G. GANCIO; FERNANDO HAUSCARRIAGA; R. HESPER; EVELINA TARCETTI; J. ADEMA; JUAN J. LARRARTE; MARCOS LUQUEZE; ELISEO DÍAZ; HUGO COMMAND; J. P. GARCÍA

Malargüe

Encuentro; 60 Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2017

Asociación Argentina de Astronomía - AAA

LLAMA is a joint project of Argentina and Brazil with the objective of install and operate a radio telescope of 12m diameter in the Province of Salta at 4820AMSL, to explore the southern sky in millimeter and sub-millimeter waves.For the signal processing of the Sub/millimeter receivers, is needed the development of a Back-end System. This Back-end will process the Intermediate Frequencies from the Sub/millimeter receiver at the frequencies of 4GHzup to 12GHz, with a maximum instantaneous band width of 16GHz for both polarizations.The Back-End consists of several modules for the processing and acquiring of the signal, the main modules are:IF Switch for different receiver selection. IF Down converter for the filtering and conditioning of the signal, Local Oscillator for the down conversion of the signal, Monitor and Control for the modules and a eight channel 2500MHz instantaneous band width / 65536 FFT points Spectrometer for the digitizing of the Base Band Signal.This Back-end was designed at the IAR specifically for the LLAMA radiotelescope, some modules like the IF Down converter and the Local Oscillator are being developed and assembled at IAR. The different modules will be installed on a single Rack unit (19inch x 45units x 2 meter). A Prototype Back-end was assembled and integrated with the LLAMA Cryostat at the NOVA institute in the Netherlands.With this integration it was possible to verify the correct functionality of the Back-End and the signal integrity of the Band 9 Sub/millimeter receiver (602GHz up to 720GHz) by measuring the receiver characteristics thru thePrototype Back-End.The present work will show the integration process of the LLAMA Prototype Back-End, the integration with the Sub/millimeter receiver, and the results from the verification measurement of the Front-End plus Back-endsystem.