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Enhanced Correlator

If the Enhanced ALMA is made possible with Japan entering as a third major partner, an Enhanced Correlator will be necessary to accommodate the additional 12-m antennas and the ALMA Compact Array (ACA). The design of the Baseline Correlator may be changed to accommodate larger or smaller arrays until production units are begun. Thus, a first option for the Enhanced Correlator would be to modify the design of the Baseline Correlator. This will increase the cost of the correlator by a factor of (N/64)1.6, where N is the number of antennas. For example, a correlator for 80 antennas would be 40% more expensive than a 64 antenna correlator and require a few months of additional design time. An obvious second option would be a correlator based on the specifications of the Future Correlator, but the design should accommodate the total final number of 12-m antennas and the ACA. In the latter case, the Enhanced Correlator should be included as part of the Enhanced ALMA project (see section 2). Thus, since budgetary constraints would not be similar to those of the Future Correlator, a larger number of channels could be envisaged for the Enhanced Correlator.


next up previous
Next: Calibration Up: Correlator Issues Previous: Future Correlator
Al Wootten
2000-10-10