Repurposing ROACH-1 boards for prototyping of readout systems for optical-NIR MKIDs

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a cost-effective method for prototyping optical-NIR MKID readout systems by repurposing existing ROACH-1 boards and developing a flexible software pipeline for hardware extensibility.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to MKID readout prototyping using repurposed hardware and modernized software frameworks for enhanced flexibility.

Findings

Successful repurposing of ROACH-1 boards for MKID readout

Development of a scalable, extensible software pipeline

Potential for hardware upgrades to newer platforms

Abstract

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) are cryogenic photon detectors and are attractive because they permit simultaneous time, energy and spatial resolution of faint astronomical sources. We present a cost-effective alternative to dedicated (e.g. analogue) electronics for prototyping readout of single-pixel Optical/NIR MKIDs by repurposing existing and well-known ROACH-1 boards. We also present a pipeline that modernises previously-developed software and data frameworks to allow for extensiblity to new applications and portability to new hardware (e.g. Xilinx ZCU111 or 2x2 RFSoC boards).