Distributed Data Acquisition and Storage Architecture for the SuperNova Acceleration Probe

Author

Prosser, Alan ; Cardoso, Guilherme ; Chramowicz, John ; Marriner, John ; Rivera, Ryan ; Turqueti, Marcos

Author_Institution

Fermi Nat. Accel. Lab., Batavia

Volume

55

Issue

1

fYear

2008

Firstpage

246

Lastpage

250

Abstract

The Supernova Acceleration Probe (SNAP) instrument is being designed to collect image and spectroscopic data for the study of dark energy in the universe. In this paper, we describe a distributed architecture for the data acquisition system which interfaces to visible light and infrared imaging detectors. The architecture includes the use of NAND flash memory for the storage of exposures in a file system. Also described is an FPGA-based lossless data compression algorithm with a configurable pre-scaler based on a novel square root data compression method to improve compression performance. The required interactions of the distributed elements with an instrument control unit will be described as well.

Keywords

astronomical instruments; astronomical observatories; astronomical spectra; astronomical techniques; cosmology; dark energy; data acquisition; field programmable gate arrays; FPGA-based lossless data compression algorithm; NAND flash memory; Supernova Acceleration Probe; dark energy; distributed data acquisition system; infrared imaging detectors; spectroscopic data; universe; visible light imaging detectors; Acceleration; Dark energy; Data acquisition; Data compression; File systems; Infrared detectors; Infrared imaging; Instruments; Probes; Spectroscopy; Data acquisition; data compression; distributed memories; space vehicle electronics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2007.913941

Filename

4448520