[alma_na] Bi-lateral DH/TL Teleconference Minute - November 2001

[Carolyn White]

ALMA Bilateral Teleconference - 2001-Nov-26

Attendees: Baars, Baudry, Brown, Chikada, Glendenning, Hasegawa, Ishiguro,
Kawabe, Kingsley, Kurz, Mangum, Morita, Okumura, Payne, Porter, Radford,
Sakamoto, Simon, Sramek, Tan, Webber, White, Wilson, Wootten

Agenda:

What does it mean to be a bi-lateral project? and What do we do from
here?

Brown states we want to make progress in the bi-lateral project, but also
plan for the possible re-entry of Japan in 2004.  Brown suggested that we
need to set up a project the U.S. and European funding agencies will feel
confident in funding.  There is not an updated bi-lateral plan as of yet;
we have to provide this to the ACC soon.  The AEC will meet later this
month to develop the plan based on the work that was done for the
bilateral project nearly a year ago.  At the AEC meeting all the project
tasks will be assigned either to the North American partner or the
European partner.  This gives us yet another problem on how to keep viable
the potential for later Japanese involvement.  Brown's email message from
earlier this morning outlined a plan for accommodating the current current
situation.  Baudry and Kurz see no problems with the plan.  Brown states
that it may be helpful to the Japanese if their funding agency could see
that the Europe and North America have established a sound and well
functioning project.

The baseline project for our bi-lateral project is: 64 12-meter antennas
with four frequency bands.  Simon has converted the tri-lateral costing
into a bi-lateral costing the AEC will review later this month.  After the
AEC meets, a draft will be sent out to all division heads and team
leaders.  Examples of the changes being implemented to return to the
bilateral project: Japan will no longer share in the funding of the IPO;
NA and Europe will split the site development cost; the transporter will
again be the responsibility of Europe; there will be no enhancements in
the front end sub-system beyond the initial 4 bands; however the
bi-lateral partners could "sub-contract" front end parts to the Japanese
and once they rejoin the project they could take over the responsibility.
The back end subsystem planning needs a lot of work.  The computing
subsystem has been redivided and will be discussed with others.  The
system engineering and integration task, and the science tasks are now
simply split 50/50.

After the AEC meeting, the updated bi-lateral plan will be distributed to
all DH/TL for their input on the technical plan, the cost, and the
schedule.  Webber provided a point of reference for the cost of a "second
generation" ALMA correlator; he stated that if the EVLA correlator design
using current technology were adapted to the needs of ALMA (i.e. 64
antennas) it would be only twice as expensive as the baseline ALMA
correlator.  The photonics development plan is being worked on by Payne in
collaboration with the groups in Europe.  He will generate a draft of the
more detailed plan very soon.  Kurz would like to have this before the end
of the week.

We will need to update the Project Book to reflect the current state of
Project.  Baars will be sending out information soon.  The ACC will need
to see our draft of the Project Book (along with much other material from
the AEC) by the first week of February 2002.

Status Reports
--------------
Site Development - Radford will meet with Hofstadt next month to discuss
the site development planning.  A PDR is planned for July 2002.  The RFQ
for power studies has been released internationally.

Antenna - Vertex is still holding the delivery date of April 23, 2002.
Panel production is the key element in the critical path.  The BUS is in
production.  All the major steel components have been fabricated and will
be completed for acceptance test at the end of December 2002.  The delta
CDR and CDD material will go out this week.

Kurz stated that the ECC has decided to go ahead with the updated Alcatel
proposal; the new delivery date to the ALMA Test Facility is April 2003.
The ECC has sent the updated proposal to the ESO finance committee for
approval.

Front End - Perfetto reported that the evaluation receivers have one dewar
ready in the lab.  The receiver cartridge parts are being made.  The
electronics for the receiver are coming along slowly.  We will build
receiver #2 in parallel to be ready in March 2002; then we will begin two
months of testing.

Webber is satisfied with the noise performance of the band 6 mixer.  The
re-designed band 3 SIS mixer design is finished.  The CDL is working with
the UVa foundry on getting the mask sets made.  A new laboratory test
dewar will be ready by the end of December 2001.

Back End - The data transmission system prototype is making continued
progress.  The layout of the FO receiver card has gone out for bids.  We
will be ready for integration in January.  The LO reference is nearing
completion.  The series of measurements on the LO switching appears to be
satisfactory.  Baudry made measurements on the 2 bit digitizer to verify
that the sample signal is very clean.  The final layout is due in mid
December.  We have not yet tested the 3 bit digitizer; we plan to test
this in Grenoble.  We have visited SDM to discuss production and a revised
estimate for the production costs has been received.

Correlator - There will be a meeting in Socorro to work on the interfaces.
Work continues on collecting firmware to support the ALMA operational
modes.  We are going forward with the chip procurement and the rack
design.

Computing - The control software group is preparing for tests at theVertex
factory in January.  The next release of common software will be in
January.  There will be a meeting in Garching to to discuss and finalize
the top level architecture for sub-systems to adhere to. The effort to
establish a complete, mirrored, bi-lateral web has been restarted.

System Engineering/System Integration - There will be a few managerial
issues to discuss.  The project book update needs to be done soon; Baars
is heading this effort.  System integration needs a lot of work.  We are
waiting for Gray to start in early December.  We are short on manpower at
ESO.  Work needs to be done to update the system block diagrams.

Science - Guilloteau issued the memos on the compact array.  Holdaway is
also working on a memo summarizing the effects of antenna surface error on
imaging performance.  The configuration working group meets every two
weeks and a new configuration design will be available next week to
discuss.  The ALMA book will be published shortly.  Wootten has given
talks to several groups (Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, OVRO).

The next ALMA DH/TL meeting will be December 17 at 1500 UT.