The EDD Radio Astronomy Backend Framework

@misc{barr2026radio,
  title = {{The EDD Radio Astronomy Backend Framework}},
  author = {Ewan D. Barr and Amit Bansod and Jan Behrend and Weiwei Chen and Niclas Esser and Yungpen Men and Tobias Winchen and Jason Wu and Uwe Bach and Claus Connot and Matthias Heininger and Jedrzej Jawor and Christoph Kasemann and Michael Kramer and Alex Kraus and Eddy Nussbaum and Oliver Polch and Jan Wagner and Gundolf Wieching},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.11177},
  eprint = {2609.11177},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11177},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - The EDD Radio Astronomy Backend Framework
AU  - Ewan D. Barr
AU  - Amit Bansod
AU  - Jan Behrend
AU  - Weiwei Chen
AU  - Niclas Esser
AU  - Yungpen Men
AU  - Tobias Winchen
AU  - Jason Wu
AU  - Uwe Bach
AU  - Claus Connot
AU  - Matthias Heininger
AU  - Jedrzej Jawor
AU  - Christoph Kasemann
AU  - Michael Kramer
AU  - Alex Kraus
AU  - Eddy Nussbaum
AU  - Oliver Polch
AU  - Jan Wagner
AU  - Gundolf Wieching
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/10
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.11177
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11177
AB  - Modern digital radio astronomy receivers produce increasingly wide-bandwidth, high bit-rate data streams that necessitate the development of flexible, scalable, and maintainable backend processing and recording systems. Historically, such backend instrumentation has been tightly coupled to telescope observing modes, limiting reuse between observatories and science cases. We present the Effelsberg Direct Digitisation (EDD) backend framework, a software-defined architecture for constructing real-time radio astronomy backends on commodity off-the-shelf computing infrastructure. We describe its design, implementation, supported observing modes, and operational deployments. EDD separates a common core framework from plugin-provided observing capabilities. The core provides orchestration, telescope interfaces, pipeline lifecycle management, monitoring, and deployment tooling, while plugins implement processing pipelines for specific observing modes. The framework is designed to support both single-dish and interferometric instruments through site-specific configuration and plugin selection. EDD currently supports spectroscopy and spectropolarimetry, pulsar timing and searching, baseband recording, very long baseline interferometry, correlation, and beamforming. Operational deployments include the Effelsberg 100-m telescope, the SKA-MPI prototype dish, the Thai National Radio Telescope, and the ARGOS interferometric prototype array. By separating common services, observing-mode plugins, and site-specific configuration, it allows backend capabilities to be deployed across heterogeneous telescope environments and provides a community resource for broadband radio astronomy instrumentation.
ER  -