On a project such as the Karoo Array Telescope, "systems engineering" must ensure that the technologies of all the sub-systems, such as the antenna, digital hardware and software, are integrated. Another responsibility is to look at the whole life cycle of the system (from conception to the end of its useful lifetime) and to consider key factors which influence the design of the system and subsystems.

While the KAT is now being designed, there are many ongoing system engineering design activities, as shown in the following diagram:

The systems engineering team must consider the physical, functional and performance aspects of the system and must trace each of these aspects from the user-level (in this case astronomer level design) through to the architecture design that will form the basis for sub-system specifications.

At the user-level, the systems engineering team is compiling models and design information on the astronomer's requirements for using the KAT. A first draft is currently under review. The diagram below shows some of the concepts being developed and the emerging structure for capturing the astronomer's requirements.

View larger version

At the system-level design the first concepts are emerging. This includes a high level description of proposal management; signal conditioning; signal processing required for all the observing modes; data management, instrument control; instrument monitoring and maintenance concepts.

In the performance management domain, good progress is being made on tracing the astronomer-level performance requirements down to subsystem performance specifications. An example of how these performance measures are traced through the system design levels is shown in the following figure:

Current systems engineering activities on Prototypes

On the development of prototypes the systems engineering team has to play an integrative role on prototype design and testing. The "3x4 FPA" prototype project is currently in its final stages. This was a valuable test case to see how the systems engineering design work would integrate with subsystem design activities and how it adds value. Some of the highlights are shown in the figure below, indicating which aspects of the system design provided key value points.

The next challenge for the systems engineering team is the Experimental Development Model (XDM) which will be a single-antenna system with full digital back-end receiver to test high-risk aspects of the KAT design. The scope of the project has been defined, based on a risk-driven strategy. Currently the XDM operations plan is being formulated which would be the major input for subsequent system design work.