Database Design for Aperture Array Hardware Management

As the size and complexity of an aperture array grows, so too does the amount of hardware involved. As we approach SKA sized arrays of many thousands of elements, hardware management and characterisation will become an issue. As part of the SKADS programme, we have developed a simple hardware management database “pathfinder”, which relates each hardware component to corresponding characterisation measurements and signal information. This database was used to store information about the analogue characterisation campaign conducted on the 2-PAD aperture array in the first half of 2009 (Price et al. 2009). This measurement database is available online at http://2-pad.physics.ox.ac.uk.