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Getting Started with Docker on the REALTA Nodes As of right now, all of the REALTA compute nodes (UCC*) and storage node (NUIG1) have some form of the standard I-LOFAR docker image. The NUIG1 machine has a slightly outdated version without GPU support (due to...

Most of the information in this chapter can be found within the LOFAR Station Cookbook, though there are a few other handy additions regarding the output formats that can be of interest. We will also discuss the current methogology for handling the data produc...

Array correlation/crosslet statistics statistics (XSTs) describe the autocorrelation between different antenna for a single subband at a given point in time (visibilities, covariances). A single XST file contains a single subband's data, which differs from a A...

Beamlet statictics (BSTs) are effectively dyanmic spectra produced by the station at a regular, relatively low cadence, interval. Generating BSTs BSTs are generated using the rspctl command in conjunction with a running beamctl command (as a result, the stat...

Array correlation/crosslet statistics statistics (ACCs) describe the autocorrelation between different antenna for a number of subbands across a period of time (visibilities, covariances). A single ACC file typically contains one or more scans across the entir...

The CEP packet stream is the lowest level, constantly produced data product from the station. It is a series of UDP packets that provide information on the digitized voltages for a given antenna while a beamformed observaiton is performed. There are normally 4...

In international mode, the station has 4 software levels, but only 3 of which are used extensively. Levels are applied consecutively, so entering software level 3 will turn on any services that are normally turned on by software level 1 and 2. Software level ...

Antenna Sets In international mode, we recommend using either the LBA_OUTER or HBA_JOINED antenna sets, depending on the part of the instrument you intend to use. The remaining antenna sets are mostly used in the core and remote stations depending on the need...

Beamforming is the process by which the station electronics collect the antenna signals and delays the signals to allow them to be coherently summed to point at a certain point in the sky. Depending on your bit-mode, you can control between 244 and 976 of thes...

There are 3 available bit modes available while observing with the station. 4, 8 and 16-bit, each of which describe the size of the signed word of each beamlet sample. 8-bit is the standard mode used for observations with I-LOFAR. Adjusting the bit mode of th...

Given we're often stuck with a full drive or want to start transferring data to collaborators while observations are on-going, I had a look into the NUMA setup of UCC1 to see if we could try keep recording processing on one NUMA node and offloading on another ...

FRBs and RRats are highly transient by their nature. As a result, we could see a single peak in a 10 hour observation. While keeping the raw voltages on hand can help with re-processing observations to avoid missing features due to issues in the current method...

An alternative recording method for some observations is with the LuMP software from MPIfRA. It has been used in the past for coordinated observations with FR606 and at the request of observers from the UK and Poland. Any DSPSR sub-program (dspsr, digifil, di...

PRESTO can be used for generating timing files for use with tempo(2).  To start, a standard prepfold command should be run, though to use the output archives for timing the -nosearch flag must be used, as a result you will need a well-timed target (good entry...