The automatic calibration of Korean VLBI Network data

TL;DR

This paper presents an automatic calibration method for Korean VLBI Network data using the KVN Pipeline, demonstrating improved results over manual calibration and confirming the pipeline's effectiveness for phase transfer in VLBI data processing.

Contribution

The paper introduces an automated calibration pipeline for KVN data that leverages multi-frequency phase transfer, streamlining VLBI data processing and improving calibration accuracy.

Findings

Pipeline calibration outperforms manual calibration without phase transfer.

Results from pipeline and manual phase-transferred data are identical.

Automatic calibration enhances efficiency and accuracy in VLBI data analysis.

Abstract

The calibration of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) data has long been a time consuming process. The Korean VLBI Network (KVN) is a simple array consisting of three identical antennas. Because four frequencies are observed simultaneously, phase solutions can be transferred from lower frequencies to higher frequencies in order to improve phase coherence and hence sensitivity at higher frequencies. Due to the homogeneous nature of the array, the KVN is also well suited for automatic calibration. In this paper we describe the automatic calibration of single-polarisation KVN data using the KVN Pipeline and comparing the results against VLBI data that has been manually reduced. We find that the pipelined data using phase transfer produces better results than a manually reduced dataset not using the phase transfer. Additionally we compared the pipeline results with a manually reduced phase-transferred dataset and found the results to be identical.