Development Of FAST Radio Telescope Whole Surface Controller Based On Cortex-A8 Embedded Technology

Along with the rapid development of radio telescope in the field of the astronomical observation,Spherical radio telescope has been used more and more widely.It means a lot to improve the performance of telescope observation,so there comes FAST.In order to make the spherical reflector exact dynamic shape,we need to control the location of each piece of reflective surface which can reflect the received cosmic radio signal to the feed source exactly.So,a quick,convenient and reliable software control system is needed to be designed.Cortex-A8-Based FAST embedded Control System is applied in Miyun model system which is 10:1 scale model of FAST project aiming to build the actual verification platform and provide technical reference for the FAST project.Benefit from Android technology,this system has the feathers of stable system,and friendly interface.In the part of communication,the TCP protocol is used for the entire network communication,commands sending and data acquisition.An order receipt mechanism and a heartbeat mechanism are also designed to guarantee the stability of communication;and the functions like node moving,upper or lower limit alarm and auto observer are also achieved.In the part of data processing,with the SQLite-based database driver,Account management,geographic information processing and the Node's data operating functions realized.In the part of security,we have designed the backup function.The backup system backups the data of the control system in real time and takes over controlling in case of the situation of the control crashes.In the part of UI,two schemes are both prepared.Not only the necessary functions,but also Friendliness of the interface is also improved.Next-generation GUI technology based on Android can achieve a variety of dynamic effects easily,is the future direction of software development.The development process of FAST software control system has experienced two site commissioning.A lot of bugs and errors have been fixed.The FAST software control system is still running in the Miyun model now.It will also provide experience in the construction of FAST in Guizhou,and promote the further development of the FAST project.