This page outlines both existing and planned pipelines for producing calibration solutions (with pulsar applications in mind).
Case 1: In-beam calibration
Overview
Green = Intermediate data products
Blue = processing steps
Steps
- Offline Fine PFB: The documentation for the offline fine PFB is found here. The FINEPFB filter should be used (as of this writing, 4 Nov 2021, this is the only available option).
- Offline Correlator: The documentation for the offline correlator is found here. On Garrawarla, there are two versions available, which differ by the integration time set by the underlying xGPU dependency. The
offline_correlator/master
module uses a "base" integration time of 0.1 secs, while theoffline_correlator/millisecond
module uses 0.02 secs. For the purposes of generating calibration solutions, the master version should be used. This step can also be achieved using the legacy pipeline, documented here. - RTS: Currently, the only documentation is found on the legacy page.
Case 2: Separate MWAX calibration observation
Overview
Green = Intermediate data products
Blue = processing steps
As of this writing, is is not yet confirmed whether the various steps in this pipeline are able to be glued together in this particular way. In particular, it is believed that the RTS can read and process UV Fits files, but this may require some special configuration settings of the RTS that we are currently unaware of. This information will be updated as it becomes available.
Steps
- Birli: A link to documentation can be found here. Currently still in development.
- RTS: Currently, the only documentation is found on the legacy page.
Verifying solutions
The legacy page describes one set of tools for visualising the RTS solutions, and these can be applied equally well to the RTS solutions produced by any of the methods above. However, VCSBeam (>= v2.18) now contains tools for visualising the solutions in an alternative, complementary way.
- Use
mwa_plot_calibration
to generate an ASCII file containing the calibration solution in a way that can be readily plotted. - Use plot_calibration.py to generate the plots themselves.