The international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project to build two radio interferometers is approaching the end of its design phase, and gearing up for the beginning of formal construction. A key part of this distributed Observatory is the overall software control system: the Telescope Manager (TM). The two telescopes, a Low frequency dipole array to be located in Western Australia (SKA-Low) and a Mid-frequency dish array to be located in South Africa (SKA-Mid) will be operated as a single Observatory, with its global headquarters (GHQ) based in the United Kingdom at Jodrell Bank. When complete it will be the most powerful radio observatory in the world. The TM software must combine the observatory operations based at the GHQ with the monitor and control operations of each telescope, covering the range of domains from proposal submission to the coordination and monitoring of the subsystems that make up each telescope. It must also monitor itself and provide a reliable operating platform. This paper will provide an update on the design status of TM, covering the make-up of the consortium delivering the design, a brief description of the key challenges and the top level architecture, and its software development plans for tackling the construction phase of the project. It will also briefly describe the consortium’s response to the SKA Project’s decision in the second half of 2016 to adopt the processes set out by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) for system architecture design and documentation, including a re-evaluation of its deliverables, documentation and approach to internal reviews.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Computer architecture, Systems engineering, Space telescopes, Software development, Software engineering, Observatories, Control systems, Astronomical telescopes, Process engineering
The SKA (Square Kilometre Array) Telescope Manager (TM) is the core package of the SKA Telescope: it is aimed at scheduling observations, controlling their execution, monitoring the telescope health status, diagnosing and fixing its faults and so on. Following the adoption of the Views and Beyond (V and B) approach [1] of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI [2]), it was discussed and agreed upon to take the opportunity to setup a TM Architecture Team (TMAT) composed by a combination of team members (who drove much of the work towards the main deliverables for the final review) and others (who can help shape the architectural design). The TMAT has to make sure that the main deliverables are well aligned with the overall TM architecture (including ensuring that the SEI approach is followed to the level agreed upon), and that there are no gaps and that cross-cutting issues are taken care of properly. This paper wants to analyze the challenges that the team has to face together with the solutions proposed to ensure that the quality of the deliverables are reached.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Control systems, Receivers, Data modeling, Data archive systems, Signal processing, Diagnostics, Standards development, Logic, Astronomical telescopes
The SKA radio telescope project is building two telescopes, SKA-Low in Australia and SKA-Mid in South Africa respectively. The Telescope Manager is responsible for the observations lifecycle and for monitoring and control of each instrument, and is being developed by an international consortium. The project is currently in the design phase, with the Preliminary Design Review having been successfully completed, along with re-baselining to match project scope to available budget. This report presents the status of the Telescope Manager work, key architectural challenges and our approach to addressing them.
KEYWORDS: Systems modeling, Visual process modeling, Control systems, Systems engineering, Radio telescopes, Modeling, Data acquisition, Logic, Electroluminescence, Interfaces
Model Driven Engineering (MDE) as a key driver to reduce development cost of M&C systems is beginning to find acceptance across scientific instruments such as Radio Telescopes and Nuclear Reactors. Such projects are adopting it to reduce time to integrate, test and simulate their individual controllers and increase reusability and traceability in the process. The creation and maintenance of models is still a significant challenge to realizing MDE benefits. Creating domain-specific modelling environments reduces the barriers, and we have been working along these lines, creating a domain-specific language and environment based on an M&C knowledge model. However, large projects involve several such domains, and there is still a need to interconnect the domain models, in order to ensure modelling completeness. This paper presents a knowledge-centric approach to doing that, by creating a generic system model that underlies the individual domain knowledge models. We present our vision for M&C Domain Map Maker, a set of processes and tools that enables explication of domain knowledge in terms of domain models with mutual consistency relationships to aid MDE.
KEYWORDS: Control systems, Control systems, Telescopes, Observatories, Radio astronomy, Interfaces, Prototyping, Astronomical telescopes, Signal processing, Astronomy, Optical instrument design
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's most advanced radio telescope, designed to be many times times more sensitive and hundreds of times faster at mapping the sky than today's best radio astronomy facilities. The scale and advanced capabilities of the SKA present technical challenges for co-ordinating and executing observations. This paper discusses the requirements placed on the SKA's observation sequencer - the Observation Execution Tool - and the functions it must perform. A design and prototype implementation of the Observation Execution Tool are presented, with initial results showing that a Python implementation using a message-driven component architecture could be capable of meeting the SKA's requirements.
KEYWORDS: Systems modeling, Systems engineering, Chemical elements, Radio telescopes, Data modeling, Receptors, Complex systems, Telescopes, Astronomy, Calibration
Ensuring completeness and correctness of the requirements for a complex system such as the SKA is challenging. Current system engineering practice includes developing a stakeholder needs definition, a concept of operations, and defining system requirements in terms of use cases and requirements statements. We present a method that enhances this current practice into a collection of system models with mutual consistency relationships. These include stakeholder goals, needs definition and system-of-interest models, together with a context model that participates in the consistency relationships among these models. We illustrate this approach by using it to analyze the SKA system requirements.
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