Real time high precision hardware correlator

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is an important radio astronomy technology, it has high spatial resolution, is widely used in deep space probes high precision measurements, the correlator is the VLBI core data pre-processing equipment, is a complex high speed signal processing system. For a long time, due to the complex and expensive digital components limits, hardware correlator was unable to complete the high resolution real time correlation process. In recent years, with the development of the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology, a lot of high performance digital signal processing platforms based on FPGA chip have appear. In Shanghai astronomical observatory, we have designed a hardware correlator based on FPGA and used in Chinese lunar project Chang'E 1, Chang'E 2, Chang'E 3 and Chang'E 5T1 mission. But because of the limitation of the hardware platform, the real time processing speed and precision is limited, can not meet the requirements of the follow up Chinese Lunar project and further Mars project. Recently with the cooperations with Joint Institute for VLBI in European (JIVE), a high performance processing platform called Uniboard is developed. The next generation hardware correlator based on Uniboard is designing in Shanghai astronomical observatory. The project plan to design a real time high resolution multiple orbit correlator based on Uniboard platform, and get experience for designing the cost effective low power next generation hardware correlator. The project also plan to research the high speed vlbi 2010 (also called VGOS) correlator and the spectral line VLBI, pulsar and deep space exploration data processing technology.