We propose the development of a wideband full stokes parameterised spectrometer (polarimeter) for radio astronomy applications, targeting the Xilinx Zynq RFSoC platform.

Spectrometers are instruments that measure and record the spectral content of signals, such as radio waves received from astronomical sources[1]. Analysis of the output of these instruments provides valuable information to radio astronomers, to better understand the celestial radio sources. The greater the bandwidth of the spectrometer, the more information available to the astronomer, driving the need for new wider bandwidth instruments. However, the progress has been limited by the cost, performance and complexity of development such systems.

CASPER [2], the “Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronic Research” have addressed this problem by developing platform independent hardware and open source software to take advantage of developments in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Analog to Digital Convertor (ADC) technology and “quickly” target new platforms such as the Xilinx RFSoC evaluation board (ZCU111).

This project will focus on the porting of the CASPER spectrometer instrument and dependent libraries to the Xilinx ZCU111 evaluation platform. We will also look at improving the board support package infrastructure by migrating the JASPER toolflow to use Migen, an open source python library for generating and building gateware projects [4]. The toolchain will also be extended to support the Xilinx Pynq infrastructure [5], which will be interfaced to existing CASPER Python libraries.

Should time allow, we will begin the next iteration of the Berkeley SETI Research Center’s Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations (SERENDIP) program [6]. This installment would be the next generation instrument system for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) coined SERENDIP VII. The system will be an open-source, ultra-high resolution, wide-bandwidth dual-pol spectrometer to be used on the world’s largest radio telescopes, created using the new Xilinx Zynq RFSoC evaluation board (ZCU111).

[1] “Spectrometers and Polyphase Filterbanks in Radio Astronomy”, Danny C. Price, May 2018, https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03579

[2] CASPER - http://casper-dsp.org/

[3] CASPER Toolflow - https://casper-toolflow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/jasper_documentation.html

[4] Migen reference - https://m-labs.hk/migen/index.html

[5] PYNQ reference - https://readthedocs.org/projects/pynq/

[6] SERENDIP VI - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7436240/

Key Industry Consultants:

Dan Werthimer: Chief Scientist, SETI@Home, UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab: danw@ssl.berkeley.edu

Jack Hickish: Assistant Researcher, UC Berkeley Radio Astronomy Lab: jackhickish@ssl.berkeley.edu

Alan Wilson-Langman: Senior Project Engineer, Vermeer Corporation: awilson-langman@vermeer.com