The following events related to RFI 2016 will be held the week before and after the conference for the convenience of participants.

CALIM 2016

SKA Calibration and Imaging Workshop, 2016

CALIM Workshops are meetings to discuss state-of-the-art in interferometric calibration and imaging algorithms/techniques.

Dates : October 9 - 14, 2016
Venue : Pete V. Domenici Science Operations Center (formerly AOC), Socorro, New Mexico, USA
Host : NRAO
Registration : invitation only
Contact E-mail address : calim2016 (at) nrao (dot) edu
Website : https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/Software/Algorithms/CALIM2016

Special session on real-time RFI mitigation implementation

Modern heterogeneous computing, and particularly the combination of FPGAs, high throughput network switches, and GPUs, have allowed current radio astronomy backends to become much more flexible than the previous generation of instruments. These developments also make it much more straightforward to develop, implement and test real-time RFI mitigation strategies in these instruments. One session of the RFI 2016 workshop will be devoted to assessing the current state of the art, and the availability of such algorithms in production backends.

In addition, the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) is interesting in developing such a facility for VEGAS, the facility spectrometer/pulsar backend for the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This backend, VEGAS, was developed by a collaboration led by Dan Werthimer at UC Berkeley, and is implemented using CASPER hardware and firmware for initial data capture and coarse channelization, and GPUs for fine channelization and subsequent data processing. Other groups may also be pursuing such developments for their own instrumentation. We would be keen to discuss potential designs, in detail, with others who may be interested to collaborate on this project, and to share current ideas and, if feasible, actual implementations. If there is sufficient interest, RFI 2016 will schedule a follow-on day, Friday 21st October, for these discussions. If you would like to participate in such a session, please contact Richard Prestage to express interest, and obtain more details.

Dates : October 21, 2016
Venue : NRAO - Socorro, NM, USA
Host : NRAO Array Operation Center
Registration : ASAP
Contact E-mail address : rprestag (at) nrao (dot) edu
Website : https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/GB/Projects/RtRfiMitigation

Workshop on Phased Array Antenna Modeling and Signal Processing

Software Enabled Radio Astronomy (SERA)

Workshop on Phased Array Antenna Modeling
and Signal Processing

Phased array feeds and aperture arrays are transitioning from research to development for synthesis imaging instruments, Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Pathfinders, and large single-reflector telescopes. To enable students, astronomers, and researchers to access the latest developments in this field, Brigham Young University announces a one-day, hands-on workshop on array antenna modelling and signal processing for astronomical instruments.

Dates : October 24, 2016
Venue : Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
Host : Brigham Young University
Registration : September 30, 2016
Contact E-mail address : warnick (at) ee (dot) byu (dot) edu
Website : http://sera2016.eventbrite.com
Flyer