Atacama Compact Array Correlator for Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and verification of a digital spectro-correlator for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, capable of processing signals from sixteen antennas with high bandwidth and polarization capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a new FX-architecture correlator specifically developed for the ACA, detailing its design and hardware verification.

Findings

Successfully processed signals from up to sixteen antennas.

Verified hardware performance matches design specifications.

Supports dual polarization and 2 GHz bandwidth processing.

Abstract

We have developed a FX-architecture digital spectro-correlator, Atacama Compact Array Correlator for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The ACA Correlator processes four pairs of dual polarization signals, whose bandwidth is 2 GHz, from up to sixteen antennas, and calculates auto- and cross-correlation spectra including cross-polarization in all combinations of sixteen antennas. We report the detailed design of the correlator and the verification results of the correlator hardware.