delaysolver

Usage:

delaysolver -c delaysolver.parset [-s scheduling_block] [-f measurement_set] [-d path_to_sb]

This utility is intended to assist with the initial delay calibration of the array after maintenance or power cycle. It processes a short observation of some dominant continuum calibrator (e.g. 1934-638) and produces a file directly suitable for uploading into the FCM. The tool also supports a number of useful options to assist commissioning. It is intended to be run on one of the ingest service nodes, but will work in other environments (which is sometimes necessary for debugging or experiments).

The measurement set can be given either in the command line, or in the parset (see below). If the parset contains cp.ingest.tasks.FringeRotationTask.params.fixeddelays keyword, the delay corrections solved for by this tool will be added to the delays specified in this parameter (the name is deliberately chosen to match the old fcm key and assist copy-pasting). The result is reported to the log and is written into an ascii file called corrected_fixeddelay.parset in the format accepted by fcm put. It is also possible to export delays in the old format, i.e. with all delays given in a single cp.ingest.tasks.FringeRotationTask.params.fixeddelays key. However, by default, the current FCM format (i.e. separate delay key per antenna) is assumed. Another useful alternative, which is intended to be the main method used in operations, is to specify the scheduling block ID via the -s command line option. In this case, both previous delay values and the measurement set file name are taken from the scheduling block directory. The most recent FCM delay key format is assumed and a warning is given if the old style key is present in the parset. By default, the path to the scheduling block directory is given in the parset (sbdir configuration parameter), but could be overridden with the -d command line option.

With the correctly set cutoff, the tool was expected to deal with birdies automatically and provide a delay solution automatically. However, it pays to inspect that the system is working well and doesn’t have other correlator artefacts in addition to occasional spikes. Otherwise, an incorrect delay could be inserted which can make things worse. As an additional diagnostics, the tool produces an ASCII file called avgspectrum.dat which contains phase spectra for all baselines before they are passed to the delay solver (i.e. with flagging and averaging applied). In the case of troubleshooting, it is handy to inspect these spectra which should show a reasonable phase slope (note, phase wraps are normal - they are handled well by the delay solution algorithm). The format of this file contains 4 columns:

antenna1_id (from 0 to 5)
antenna2_id (from 0 to 5)
channel_id (0 based, after averaging; 0 corresponds to 0 in the original dataset)
phase_in_degrees

Parameters understood by delaysolver are given in the following table and should not contain any prefix:

Parameter

Type

Default

Description

stokes

string

“XX”

Polarisation product to use. The code does no conversion, so the parameter should correspond to a product which actually has been observed.

resolution

double

1e6

Spectral resolution in Hz to average data to before solving for delays. Averaging of integer number of channels is done to match the requested resolution as close as possible. If the dataset has already equal or more coarse resolution, nothing is done to the data prior to solving

uselags

bool

false

If true, coarse delays are searched first using FFT (i.e. lag spectrum). This is handy when delays are way out and phase wraps too often across the band. If this mode is used, the averaging to the resolution configured with resolution is done after the coarse delay is determined and taken out.

beam

int

0

Beam to work with

scan

int

-1

If non-negative, only the given scan will be used

cutoff

double

-1

If positive, the spectral channels which have the amplitude greater than the cutoff value are flagged. This is done before any averaging.

exclude13

bool

false

If true, AK01-AK03 baseline is excluded from the solution

sbpath

string

“./”

Path to the directory which contains scheduling blocks (only used with -s command line option). This parameter is overridden by the -d command line option, if it is present.

ms

string

“”

A full path to the measurement set to use (required if ms is not given in the command line or via the scheduling block)

cp.ingest.tasks.FringeRotationTask.params.fixeddelays

vector<double>

None

Current fixed delays (can only be used if no scheduling block is given). Note, this is an obsolete format for specifying delays. Specify scheduling block to work with the current format.

oldfcmformat

bool

false

If true, the output is given in the old FCM format, i.e. as a single vector for all defined antennas. May be handy for analysis scripts, but not intended to be used in normal operations.

refant

unsigned int

1

Index of the reference antenna (zero delay correction is assumed). Should be present in the measurement set, otherwise the result may have degeneracies.

delaythreshold

quantity string

100ns

Optional threshold for the delay update. The application can either give a warning or abort (see the smallupdates parameter) if the largest delay correction turns out to be exceeding the threshold by absolute value.

smallupdates

bool

false

Optional flag to control whether the application should fail if the resulting delay corrections turn out to be more the threshold given by delaythreshold , i.e. with this flag set the updates are ensured to be small by absolute value.

stream

unsigned int

equal to beam

Data stream to use for solution. This option is used when data are taken from the scheduling block directory. By default, the stream (i.e. file) index is the same as the beam index. This keyword can be specified to force the solver to use a particular frequency chunk if more than one is created in the given ingest configuration.

qualitythreshold.lag

double

-1.

Threshold on the solution quality for the lag-based delay search algorithm. If the resulting quality figure (which always belongs to [0,1] range and is a proxy for the signal-to-noise ratio for the fringe for this particular method) is below the given threshold for any unflagged baseline, the procedure is aborted with an error message. Due to the range for the quality figures, negative value means essentially to ignore the check.

qualitythreshold.phase

double

-1.

Similar quality thresholding parameter to qualitythreshold.lag, but for the phase slope based algorithm. The quality figure is the absolute value of the correlation coefficient in this case. It also belongs to [0,1] range, so setting this keyword to a negative value effectively bypasses the check.

Examples

Typical parset for use on the ingest service node:

The tool is used with -s command line option and takes the measurement set name and the fixed delay setting used during observations from the supplied scheduling block

# use XX polarisation
stokes = XX
# search for coarse delays using FFT first
uselags = true
# then average down to 1 MHz
resolution = 1e6
# use the first beam
beam = 0
# the cutoff may need an adjustment if beams are formed with different normalisation
# the following value seems to be good for single port beams we currently use
cutoff = 0.23
# We exclude AK01-AK03 baseline due to cross-talk and interference, otherwise it
# can skew the solution
exclude13 = true
sbpath = /askapingest/ruby/askap-scheduling-blocks
# fail delaysolver if the resulting delays are exceeding 300 ns by absolute value
delaythreshold = 300ns
smallupdates = true
# fail the delaysolver if the quality of the lag-based preliminary estimate is below 0.5
# (we normally get high SNR case, so this quality figure should be over 0.8, if not more)
qualitythreshold.lag = 0.5