Speaker
Description
SKA-Low is the low frequency radio telescope currently
under construction in Western Australia. At its final extent,
it will consist of 512 stations up to 74 km apart, each
containing 256 antennas which can be used in different
combinations to digitally “point” the telescope. The
Monitoring, Control and Calibration Subsystem (MCCS) is
responsible for performing calibration and providing local
monitoring and control of all of the LFAA (Low Frequency
Aperture Array) hardware components. This includes
managing the allocation of resources for an observation,
and the aggregation of health status. SKAO has adopted the
Tango control system framework, and the MCCS software
comprises upwards of 18 different Tango devices, some of
which are replicated dozens of times for a single station.
This complexity poses a significant challenge to computing
resources and reliability when considering how to scale up
the system, first to the 16 stations to be constructed and
integrated by January 2026, then 68 stations at the end of
2026, and targeting 307 stations by mid-2028. This paper
will describe the MCCS architecture, report on our latest
performance profiling, and discuss how we are preparing for
the AA 2 construction milestone which will need to support
68 stations.
