The Back-End group designs and builts the electronic equipment which is used beside the Front-End (receiver). The team  (7) is composed of electronic engineers and technicians with skills in radio frequency circuits and high speed digital hardware.The main techniques involved in the lab are: 

Low-noise, phase-controlled local oscillators,up to 10GHz 
Wideband RF processing, fiberoptic transmission
High speed  digitizers and demultiplexers
Digital signal processing ,FPGA and ASIC design 
Complex PCB design, mechanical artwork... etc

On-site equipment documentation : (dates are somehow approximative)

2000    The current  6-antenna correlator, for the Plateau de Bure Interferometer 
2002    The PdB time & frequency control and distribution system
2000    An IRAM-designed correlator chip
2003    Multiple Autocorrelators for the Pico Veleta :  VESPAand WILMA
2000     VLBI -related issues , phased array on PdB
2003    The round trip phase stabilization system for the LO transport system
2000    The ALMA sampler digital  test equipment
2004    The 4-8 GHz   optical transmission, to increase (8x)  the IF bandwidth on PdB
2004    The ALMA 4 GHz digitizer clock, providing 15.6 picosecond delay steps
2005    The PdB  4-8 GHz  IF processor for the new optically transported IF
2006    An ultrafine DDS-controlled fringe rotator at X-band
2010     WideX, a 2x4 GHz correlator for the (future 8-antenna) PdB interferometer
2011     DiFER, a fast digital Front-End test platform with a 16 GHz ADC

Ongoing developments :

The LO1 Control and Transport system for NOEMA

Digital signal processing for the 5th generation of IRAM correlators

Visit  the photo gallery of a few hardware modules developed by the lab









This page and the ones below are sporadically maintained by Marc Torres Last updated  : Apr. 2012