Towards a global software architecture for operating and controlling the Cherenkov Telescope Array

Matthias Füssling; Igor Oya; Ullrich Schwanke; Jordi Campreciós; Josep Colomé; Thierry Le Flour; Rico Lindemann; Etienne Lyard; David Melkumyan; Torsten Schmidt; Joseph Schwarz; Gino Tosti; Peter Wegner; Amanda Weinstein

doi:10.1117/12.2055433

18 July 2014 Towards a global software architecture for operating and controlling the Cherenkov Telescope Array

Matthias Füssling, Igor Oya, Ullrich Schwanke, Jordi Campreciós, Josep Colomé, Thierry Le Flour, Rico Lindemann, Etienne Lyard, David Melkumyan, Torsten Schmidt, Joseph Schwarz, Gino Tosti, Peter Wegner, Amanda Weinstein

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9152, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy III; 915217 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2055433
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2014, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international initiative to build the next generation ground-based gamma-ray instrument. CTA will allow studying the Universe in the very-high-energy gamma-ray domain with energies ranging from a few tens of GeV to more than a hundred TeV. It will extend the currently accessible energy band, while increasing the sensitivity by a factor of 10 with respect to existing Cherenkov facilities. Furthermore, CTA will enhance other important aspects like angular and energy resolution. CTA will comprise two arrays, one in the Northern hemisphere and one in the Southern hemisphere, of in total more than one hundred of telescopes of three different sizes. The CTA performance requirements and the increased complexity in operation, control and monitoring of such a large distributed multi-telescope array leads to new challenges in designing and developing the CTA control software system. Indeed, the control software system must be flexible enough to allow for the simultaneous operation of multiple sub-arrays of different types of telescopes, to be ready to react in short timescales to changing weather conditions or to automatic alarms for transient phenomena, to be able to operate the observatory with a minimum personal effort on site, to cope with the malfunctioning of single telescopes or sub-arrays of telescopes, and to readout and control a large and heterogeneous set of devices. This report describes the preliminary architectural design concept for the CTA control software system that will be responsible to manage all the functionality of the CTA array, thereby enabling CTA to reach its scientific goals.

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Matthias Füssling, Igor Oya, Ullrich Schwanke, Jordi Campreciós, Josep Colomé, Thierry Le Flour, Rico Lindemann, Etienne Lyard, David Melkumyan, Torsten Schmidt, Joseph Schwarz, Gino Tosti, Peter Wegner, and Amanda Weinstein "Towards a global software architecture for operating and controlling the Cherenkov Telescope Array", Proc. SPIE 9152, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy III, 915217 (18 July 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2055433

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