Under construction in the Karoo desert is the first of 133 radio telescope dishes that will join the existing 64 from MeerKAT to make up the mid-frequency half of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO). Erecting the dish is merely the first stage of a long and rigorous process this and the following 132 antennas must undergo before they are able to produce reliable scientific data. The next step is verification and validation (V&V) where mechanical engineers from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) will work under complex conditions performing V&V activities. As part of these activities data must be read from, and commands sent to, the dish structure controller; a programmable logic controller (PLC) based control system exposed via an Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) server interface. In comes the Dish Structure Qualification software (DiSQ), a collection of tools designed to expose the OPC-UA server in an intuitive, user-friendly manner via a Python API and an engineering GUI to facilitate and expedite the V&V.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Control systems, Observatories, Antennas, Design, Signal processing, Logic, Control systems design, Radio telescopes, Open source software
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will host two radio telescopes in South Africa and Australia, each dedicated to observing at mid and low frequencies, respectively. The project has adopted the TANGO controls framework for its telescope control system. Both mid and low telescopes constitute subsystems whose components are implemented using TANGO monitoring and control and other bespoke as well as off-the-shelf software for the computing and network platforms. All devices are implemented in line with our SKA Control System Guidelines and with the aid of a shared repository for streamlined device server implementation. This ensures adherence to standards such as logging, asynchronous command execution, just to mention but a few. The components in the subsystems each implement a specialized behavior and state derived from the shared repository. The forthcoming discussion will outline how the TANGO controls framework is employed to implement the essential control elements for the SKA telescope. We will further detail our federated approach to implementing device servers which manage the different components.
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