Activities

Networking activities

• NA1: Management of I3 - Provides resources to effectively manage the EXPReS I3 project. The objective is to efficiently manage EXPRES and monitor the overall progress of the project goals, in particular the realisation of a production-level e-VLBI infrastructure. Responsible for the overall financial management of the project and the generation of annual and final reports via input from the chairs of the NA, SA and JRAs.
• NA2: EVN-NREN Forum - Partially supports a forum in which representatives of the networking and radio astronomy technical community will meet and interact with each other, including day-to-day communication via the on-line EVN-NREN email forum. The objective is to ensure that both communities are effectively engaged and that together they agree and move forward on the solutions, objectives and development priorities within EXPReS.
• NA3: e-VLBI Science Forum - Partially support the activities of the e-VLBI Science Advisory Group (eVSAG). The objectives of this activity will be to ensure that e-VLBI end-users are well informed and organised about EXPReS developments and can provide critical review of the project’s evolution. This group will also help promote & develop the full potential of the e-VLBI technique as an astronomical application.
• NA4: e-VLBI Outreach, Dissemination & Communications - Partially supports outreach and communication aspects of the EXPReS I3. Objectives include: creation of the EXPReS web-site (addressing public outreach, project management and end-user communication requirements), general promotion of EXPReS to the broad scientific and networking communities via a programme of PR activities.

Specific Service activities

• SA1: Production e-VLBI Service - A programme of integration and development that will provide astronomers (and other end-users) with a production level e-VLBI infrastructure service, capable of servicing and robustly processing e-VLBI data streams of up to 16 Gbps (net) at the EVN data processor at JIVE. The objectives will be to realise a distributed scientific instrument with unique capabilities - an e-VLBI infrastructure operating in real-time - a service that will be expandable to include input from up to 16 telescopes located across the planet (including individual telescopes of the UK e-MERLIN array).
• SA2: Network Provision for a Global e-VLBI Array - A programme of network communication provision that will permit radio telescopes across Europe and the rest of the world to obtain last mile connections to high-speed communication networks that can be connected to national research networks and international communication networks, in particular GÉANT.

Research activities

• JRA1: Future Arrays of Broadband Radio Telescopes on Internet Computing - A research project that looks towards the future hardware and software requirements that will enable the development of an e-VLBI facility in which data flows of ~ 10-30 Gbps per telescope can be reliably sustained and processed. The main objectives are to design and prototype an e-VLBI data acquisition platform (based on COTS hardware), investigate transport mechanisms and identify protocols that are optimal for e-VLBI, develop a software correlator (e-VLBI data processor) that can run on standard workstations and take advantage of distributed Grid computing resources.