A Scalable Database Model of RFI Data for the MeerKAT Radio Telescope

Abstract

In radio astronomy, radio frequency interference (RFI) refers to any signal captured by a radio telescope that did not originate from the observed target in the sky. As RFI corrupts observational data and may even damage radio telescope equipment, astronomers seek to store data on RFI, with the aim of mitigating or preventing future interference events. This is a concern for the MeerKAT telescope, precursor to the Square Kilometer Array and one of the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world to date. Currently, RFI data at MeerKAT is collected in many different file formats that do not fit into traditional database models created to store data in a fixed schema. Therefore, we have designed a scalable database model for RFI storage, that supports many databases and many data models. The database is deployed in a Dockerized environment. Preliminary testing of our design shows linearly scaling of data ingestion as data sizes increases, as well as fast query processing.