A high data rate recorder for astronomy

Author

Hinteregger, H.F. ; Rogers, A.E.E. ; Cappallo, R.J. ; Webber, J.C. ; Petrachenko, W.T. ; Allen, H.

Author_Institution

MIT Haystack Obs.,Westford, MA, USA

Volume

27

Issue

3

fYear

1991

fDate

5/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

3455

Lastpage

3465

Abstract

A magnetic tape recorder developed for the special requirements of radio astronomy and geodesy is described. These requirements include a high bit packing density and long record times. The current version of this longitudinal recorder used by the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) records 5.5 Terabits on a 14-in diameter reel of inch-wide tape. A maximum record rate of 256 Mb/s is achieved in the VLBA configuration with one recorder operating at 4 ms and utilizing 32 of the heads in a single stack. The VLBA recorders have been tested using a longitudinal density of 2.25 fr/μm (57.15 kfrpi); 448 data +56 system tracks are recorded in 14 passes, each lasting 50 min, for a total record time (at 128 Mb/s) of 12 h on 14-in diameter reel of inch-wide 13-μ-thick D1-equivalent tape

Keywords

data recording; radioastronomical techniques; radiowave interferometry; tape recorders; 1238 Mbit/s; 256 Mbit/s; 5.5×10¹² bit; VLBI; Very Long Baseline Array; geodesy; high bit packing density; high data rate recorder; long record times; longitudinal recorder; magnetic tape recorder; radio astronomy; Geodesy; Image resolution; Instruments; Laboratories; Magnetic heads; Observatories; Radio astronomy; Signal resolution; Testing; Video recording;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.79088

Filename

79088