From cwhite at nrao.edu Mon Mar 4 10:12:42 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 10:12:42 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA NA DH Teleconference - TODAY! Message-ID: <3C838EEA.6040408@nrao.edu> There will be an ALMA NA DH Teleconference today at 1800 UT. Please dial 434-984-0244. Thanks Carolyn From awootten at nrao.edu Mon Mar 4 16:59:38 2002 From: awootten at nrao.edu (Al Wootten) Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 16:59:38 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ASAC Face-to-face Meeting Message-ID: <3C83EE49.6F5BC86A@nrao.edu> Dear ALMA Division Head, or IPT Lead, or ASAC Member, For your information, I append the agenda for the ALMA Science Advisory Committee meeting upcoming in Tokyo. If you are on the agenda, you have indicated your probable attendance to me or to one of the ASAC executives; this email is to provide the latest revision of the agenda including, at the end, the form to send in to obtain a hotel reservation from our hosts in Tokyo. I'm looking forward to a productive meeting. Clear skies, Al -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Tue Mar 5 16:57:47 2002 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 16:57:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] ALMA NA DH Teleconference Minutes Message-ID: ALMA US Division Heads Teleconference Minutes - 2002-Jan-07 Attendees: Avery, Brown, Cunningham, Glendenning, Gray, Kingsley, Mangum, Perfetto, Radford, Rafal, Simon, Sramek, Webber, White Rafal, Simon, and Gray have moved to the Ivy Road location in Charlottesville. Therefore all DH meetings will be in the Ivy Road offices; the Ivy Road teleconference hub is 434-984-0244. Funding Update -------------- We still do not have the $12.5 M from the NSF. We do not know when we will get the $1 M that was supposed to arrive in early January. At this moment we need to spend very carefully because we are, as expected, nearly out of money. Large procurements should be put on hold and any critical purchases should be discussed with Rafal. Rafal is working with Vanden Bout on what we can do about this situation. There is no need to worry about salary payments though. The $12.5 M cannot be spent before the NSB approves the Project at their March or May meeting. There is no doubt that we will get their approval. Canada questioned when does the Construction Phase start for the U.S. At the moment this remains ambiguous. The fiscal boundaries set on the U.S. does not necessarily set fiscal boundaries for other partners. Rafal will report back to the group after he has further discussions with Vanden Bout and Desmond. Action Items ------------ Rafal has started to revamp the Action Item List to review the progress of the Project. The group went through the current on-line version and updates were made. White will put these on the web at URL: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/administration/actionlist/. The meetings list was also updated; remember to send White your meeting dates, etc. Questions arose on the Zero Baseline Interferometer and many questions were left unanswered. Rafal suggested a meeting be set up for the week of January 21 among a smaller group to finalize these plans. Sramek will send out a notice including date and time of meeting. Status Reports -------------- Antenna - Kingsley is at the Vertex plant in Germany. The panels are the critical path for the project. New results are going to be shown on Wednesday. The steel fabrication and mount are in the process and beginning to recover some of the recent slippage. The BUS sections should ship this month. Kingsley stated that he believes the April 23 date will slip about two to three weeks. Vertex is still expected to be at the VLA site near the end of February. The offer that was made to Jose is in doubt; he now has cold feet concerning his understanding that he may have to move to Chile in two or three years. Jose will fill the VLA Antenna on-site position. Project Book updates have been completed. Back End - The digital data link receiver board has been received. We plan to populate and evaluate the board in Tucson in the next two weeks. The Project Book has had minor revisions, but we will not have a complete re-write until the Back End PDR during ALMA Week in April. Computing - The Project Book updates have been completed. Vertex is having some CAN compatibility issues; Brooks is working on this. ATF - The AEG prototype antenna testing software has arrived; Mangum is configuring this. Mangum is completing the organization of the AEG meeting that is at the end of January. Otorola arrived last week; his first assignment includes working on the weather stations. Evaluation Receivers - Both the evaluation receivers and the holography receiver are making progress. Homsted will start in Tucson on Tuesday. Front End - Cunningham is visiting ALMA sites to become familiar with the organization of the sub-system. Front End devices were ordered and are expected to arrive at the end of January. Site - Several soil borings were performed at the Chajnantor last week. Gray - Gray is in Tucson this week; plans to work with Oliver on the documentation activities for the Project. This will help to streamline the PDRs and CDRs and make them a more valuable tool for the Project. Our next meeting will be January 21 at 1800 UT. The new teleconference hub number will be 434-984-0244. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ALMA US Division Heads Teleconference Minutes - 2002-Jan-21 Attendees: Avery, Brown, Cunningham, Glendenning, Gray, Payne, Perfetto, Porter, Radford, Simon, Sramek, Webber, White Status Reports -------------- Cunningham has been visiting the sites explaining who he is and what the job is he is doing. He is also listening to the concerns, comments, etc., of others in the Project. Gray is also visiting the sites. Payne reported on the status of the Japanese visitors who are here testing their photomixer. This is used to pump an NRAO mixer to measure noise spectrum. Brown announced that NSF will give the NRAO (ALMA) the complete $12.5 M within the next two weeks for the FY2002. The purchase orders that we are holding will not be a problem. Sramek - The ATF communication and power conduit plans are in place. The key issue is to get the trailer in place; the trailer will be used as a junction for the cables. The fence will be completed by the end of the month. We have completed the tower contract. Glendenning - The Vertex factory test is scheduled for later this week; Vertex will count this as part of the Servo Acceptance Test. The group is reviewing the control software and will participate in a teleconference to finalize ideas. The holography software is on-track with Robert. Perfetto - The holography transmitter receiver is progressing. The transmitter was recently received and we are currently reviewing the measurement options. There is a full time engineer working on this; bench tests are expected at the end of February. IPT Structure ------------- Brown explained the purpose of the IPT management system and "meta-schedule". The AEC is interested in knowing where you see problems - in the schedule? in the deliverables? who you are working with? We are trying to refine the IPT system to provide each person the best way to work. We will need to have this finalized by February 15. Comments - Glendenning believes that the IPT leader should be able to make the decision when the group disagrees. Also, there is a difference between the IPT structure figure and the text. The metaschedule reflects progress on the prototype antenna and site construction. It does not include system integration on all prototypes that we intend to put out for production at the end of 2003. The question arose as to whether the integration took place at the lab or at the antenna then meet subsystems in Chile in 2001. Brown understood that once the antenna prototype selection had been made the production prototype sub-systems would be put on the antenna. Simon would like to see level 1 milestones frozen. Sramek notices there are no subsystem milestones or deliverables in the document. Discussions continued on the possibility of having a production coordinator. How will executives get production done. We intend to contract out for all this work just as the Europeans are planning to do. Miscellaneous ------------- Sramek, Gray, Glendenning, and Payne plan to go the SPIE Meeting. Kingsley and Radford are discussing going too. The ALMA Bi-Lateral Meeting will be January 28 at 1500 UT. Next ALMA NA DH Meeting will be February 4 at 1800 UT. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From soliver at NRAO.EDU Wed Mar 6 12:55:39 2002 From: soliver at NRAO.EDU (Stacy Oliver) Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 10:55:39 -0700 Subject: [alma_na] [almanews] ALMA Memo 410 Released Message-ID: ALMA Memo #410 Designing and Prototyping of 2-4 GHz Bandpass SiGe Digitizers and Associated Test Equipment for the ALMA Project. I Alain Baudry 1, David Deschans 2,1, Jean-Baptiste Begueret 2, Yann Deval 2, Pascal Fouillat 2, Guy Montignac 1, Olivier Gentaz 3, Marc Torres 3 1 Observatoire de Bordeaux, BP 89 33270, Floirac, France 2 Laboratoire IXL, Universit? de Bordeaux, 351 cours de la Lib?ration, 33405 Talence, France 3 Universit? de Grenoble, IRAM, 300 rue de la Piscine, 38406 Saint Martin d'H?res, France February 20, 2002 Keywords : fast digitizers, demultiplexers, digitizer test equipment In this first paper we describe the approach followed to design and experimentally test the high speed and broad band analog-to-digital converters (ADC's or digitizers) required for the ALMA project. Our prototypes are based on monolithic digitizers implemented in a BiCMOS 0.35 or 0.25 ?m SiGe process with 3 or 8 quantization levels and 4 giga samples per second rate for an input signal from 2 to 4 GHz under full Nyquist condition. We have adopted a conventional flash converter architecture to design three different 2-bit digitizers and one 3-bit digitizer. The experimental results obtained with our first 2-bit digitizer ASIC show that sinusoidal input signals are properly sampled for clock rates up to 4.9 GHz. The design details and high dynamic range tests of our ADC's will be reported in forthcoming papers. A specific digitizer test equipment providing the auto-correlation and spectral analysis of the digitized signal has been developed to characterize our designs and provide the necessary feedback to the ASIC design team. It includes a broad band noise generator, a demultiplexing unit following the digitizer under test, a 16-lag auto-correlator, and FFT and display units. This equipment will also play a major role at the pre-production stage and for qualification/acceptance at the production stage. We suggest that the demultiplexing scheme developed for the digitizer test equipment could be used as a basis for multi-bit synchronization of the demultiplexed signal in front of the ALMA fiber optic transmitter system. View a pdf version of ALMA Memo 410. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma410/memo410.pdf Download a zipped postscript version of ALMA Memo 410. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma410/memo410.ps.gz _______________________________________________ Almanews mailing list Almanews at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/almanews From cwhite at nrao.edu Fri Mar 8 11:09:42 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 11:09:42 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA Week Schedules Message-ID: <3C88E246.2020700@nrao.edu> The ALMA Week Meeting Schedule and Room Schedule are attached in pdf format. Rafal has requested that US participants send me their travel itineraries. Thanks Carolyn -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: roomschedule.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 42436 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: schedule.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 65745 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Fri Mar 8 13:27:33 2002 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 13:27:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] January and February 2002 Bi-Lateral Meeting Minutes Message-ID: ALMA Bi-lateral DH/TL Meeting - 2002-Jan-28 Attendees: Avery, Baars, Baudry, Brown, Cunningham, Ellison, Glendenning, Gray, Ishiguro, Payne, Perfetto, Porter, Radford, Rafal, Sakamoto, Simon, Sramek, Stanghellini, Tan, Webber, White, Wild, Wootten Brown stated that the AEC will submit a Management Plan to the ACC. It is now the time for all of us to review the document to make sure this is the structure that we want. Changes are easier to make now than later. The AEC submitted a draft of the Plan to the IPT leaders and deputies. The AEC is soliticing comments from all. An extensive and far-reaching discussion on the topic of the IPT management structure followed. Among the points made were these: - If there is a disagreement between the IPT Leader and the Deputy Leader, the Leader should be able to decide the issue but both Project Managers should be informed of the lack of consensus. - Owing to differences in tasks faced by the differences in tasks faced by the different IPTs we may encounter problems with a "one-size-fits-all" management approach. - We need a plan to manage the construction tasks for each IPT. How will this be defined? - System engineering may present special problems because its "products" are services not tangibles. Moreover, the interaction with the IPO is tighter than for other IPTs. The funding agencies believe the ALMA Project is a joint venture between Europe and North American and hopefully soon Japan. The guiding principle is to have two equal partners and to use the existing institutions. ALMA is truly unique in this manner. Discussion followed. Jaap Baars described the planning for ALMA week. The goal is to take advantage of many of the ALMA staff being in one place. Two or more design reviews are planned. More than 100 particpants are expected. A short discussion of major project milestones highlighted those tasks that drive the construction project schedule. The DH/TLs will review the milestones for their areas. Next Meeting: February 25. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALMA Bi-lateral DH/TL Meeting - 2002-Feb-25 Attendees: Avery, Baudry, Brown, Chikada, Cunningham, Glendenning, Gray, Hasegawa, Ishiguro, Kingsley, Kurz, Morita, Payne, Perfetto, Porter, Radford, Rafal, Raffi, Simon, Sramek, Tan, Webber, White, Wild, Wootten ALMA Week --------- Brown wanted to clarify what was prepared for ALMA Week and what others anticipated. The major meetings for the week include the Front End Cartridge Meetings for three days, the Back End PDR for three days, and the Computing Meeting for four days. Cunningham and Wild are preparing for the Front End Cartridge Meeting. The major goal of the meeting is to kickoff the cartridge design, which includes ideas of the design layouts and the interfaces to other subsystems. There is no agenda yet. Baudry and Sramek are preparing the Back End PDR. This will be a wide ranging PDR to include, but not be limited to, data transmission, digital/multiduplexing boards, digitizer design, etc. The review panel membership is still pending. There will be four to six sidebar meetings as well to include detailed design discussions. We need to make sure rooms and announcements are made. The computing and software meetings are planned as well. The SSR meeting is planned by Lucas. The topics include discussion of: 1) offline requirements; 2) the role of the SSR in Phase II; and the 3) audit of offline packages. We will also be having a Phase II kickoff meeting for the subsystem. The draft subsystem agreements will be prepared before the meeting; these should be finalized before July 1, 2002. Smaller meetings include a review meeting for the progress that has been made since the last Calibration Meeting in Cambridge. The group also plans to review the Project Book chapter. Conway will review the current array configur plans and progress made since the January 2002 meeting. Also plan to review the site development planning for the rest of the Project. Please make sure Conway is added to Baars list of attendees. The System Engineering group is in the process of revising their agenda. Gray and Tan will describe the overview of system engineering and introduce the Project to the document management system. An agenda will be sent out later this week. Payne's group plans further discussion toward a direct photonic route local oscillator. The AEC project status update will be presented at the beginning of the meeting for the entire group as well as a summary of results at the end of the week. Brown requested comments from the group on what they would like the AEC to present. Members suggested: - more ATF planning at the beginning of the meeting. - a possibility of having IPT leaders and deputies give a subsystem update. - schedule milestone updates - overview of project structure - review of operations and when the operations plan will plan be - available - status of International Project Office Baars plans to have an updated agenda available by the end of the week. Contact cwhite at nrao.edu if you need hotel forms. Kurz reported on the intent of BN to give the direct concession of the ALMA Project. Rafal reported on the 2003 budget request from Bush. The funding for ALMA Construction in 2003 in the US is currently budgeted for $30 M. Finalization of budget should be known near the end of the summer. Our next meeting is planned for March 23. From cwhite at nrao.edu Mon Mar 11 10:44:51 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 10:44:51 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA NA DH Teleconference TODAY! Message-ID: <3C8CD0F3.20407@nrao.edu> There will be an ALMA NA DH Teleconference today at 1800 UT. Please dial 434-984-0244. Thanks, Carolyn From soliver at NRAO.EDU Wed Mar 13 11:29:10 2002 From: soliver at NRAO.EDU (Stacy Oliver) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 09:29:10 -0700 Subject: [alma_na] [almanews] ALMA Memo 412 Released Message-ID: ALMA MEMO #412 "68.5 to 118 GHz Measurements of Possible Infrared Filter Materials: Black Polyethylene, Zitex, and Grooved and Un-Grooved Fluorogold and HDPE" G. A. Ediss and D. Koller/NRAO-CV March 11, 2002 Keywords: time domain measurements, infrared filter materials, multilayer filters For the ALMA production test receivers at present being designed in the NRAO CDL, there is a need for infrared filters to reduce the thermal loading. One possibility is to use a plastic material which has reasonable absorption or scattering for the infrared wavelengths but low loss at the signal wavelengths. Black polyethylene (polyethylene with carbon filler) [1, 2], Zitex (expanded PTFE) [3], and Fluorogold (a glass-filled Teflon) [4] have been suggested as such materials. Measurements at 68.5-118 GHz with an HP8510 have been made on room temperature samples and multilayer filters (which were also measured at liquid nitrogen temperature). Measurements of grooved HDPE are also reported (which resolve an inconsistency in our earlier measurements [5]). View a pdf version of ALMA Memo 412. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma412/memo412.pdf Download a postscript version of ALMA Memo 412. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma412/memo412.ps _______________________________________________ Almanews mailing list Almanews at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/almanews From mrafal at nrao.edu Fri Mar 15 08:16:45 2002 From: mrafal at nrao.edu (Marc D. Rafal) Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 08:16:45 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] North American Frontend Task Assignments Message-ID: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Microsoft Word - NA Frontend Assignments.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 5271 bytes Desc: not available URL: From soliver at NRAO.EDU Mon Mar 18 15:14:04 2002 From: soliver at NRAO.EDU (Stacy Oliver) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 13:14:04 -0700 Subject: [alma_na] [almanews] ALMA Memo 413 Released Message-ID: ALMA Memo #413 PHYSICAL PARAMETERS OF THE CHAJNANTOR SCIENCE PRESERVE A.Otarola (ESO), D.Hofstadt (ESO), S.J.E. Radford (NRAO), S. Sakamoto (NAOJ/NRO) 03/18/2002 Keywords: seismicity, volcanism, geology, hidro-geology, resistivity Abstract: This document summarises previous studies of several physical parameters of the Chajnantor and Pampa La Bola sites: seismicity and volcanic hazard, geology, water availability, underground temperature fluctuations, and soil resistivity. Other parameters, such as the availability and quality of aggregates, the underground water supply potential, and the detailed characteristics of the weathering layer remains to be studied. View a pdf version of ALMA Memo 413. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma413/memo413.pdf _______________________________________________ Almanews mailing list Almanews at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/almanews From rbrown at nrao.edu Mon Mar 25 09:38:00 2002 From: rbrown at nrao.edu (Robert Brown) Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 09:38:00 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] Monthly ALMA DH/TL Teleconference References: <3C764280.9000405@nrao.edu> Message-ID: <3C9F3648.4050503@nrao.edu> Reminder: Joint DH/TL Teleconference today! 1500 UT phone to: +1 434 984 0244 -Bob From soliver at NRAO.EDU Tue Mar 26 11:22:30 2002 From: soliver at NRAO.EDU (Stacy Oliver) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:22:30 -0700 Subject: [alma_na] [almanews] ALMA Memo 414 Released Message-ID: ALMA Memo #414 An SPI Bus Implementation of a Bootloader for the PIC16F87x Dave Brown (University of Manchester, JBO) 2002/03/25 Keywords: PIC, AMBSII, SPI Bus, M&C Bus. Abstract: The latest family of PIC microcontrollers are able to write to their own program memory space. This allows a small bootloaader program to receive new program code over the SPI bus (which is normally used to communicate with the M&C bus). This bootloader program resides in the protected area at the top of memory and is invoked by a special form of reset. This facility is useful in the debug and test phases as only a single connection is required to the test host. It could also be used in the field to allow reprogramming without powering down and removing cards. This would need additional software in the M&C bus controller and the AMBSI and would require rigorous safeguards against accidental programming. View a pdf version of ALMA Memo 414. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma414/memo414.pdf Download a postscript version of ALMA Memo 414. http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma414/memo414.ps _______________________________________________ Almanews mailing list Almanews at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/almanews