2022-05-20 TTA Requirements Meeting

• Date: //date
• Time: 9:00 ET
• Location: nraozoom04 

Attendance:

• Jeff Kern
• Dana Balser
• Mark Whitehead 
• Allison Costa

Agenda:

• ngVLA Documents
  • ngVLA Gap Analysis
• Product Owner Discussions
  • What field source elements are required for each capability?
  • STT-709 - Getting issue details... STATUS
  • What can be modified in the TOM (front end)?
  • STT-693 - Getting issue details... STATUS
• sprint Review page

ngVLA gap analysis comments

• Allie: Generally, I do not see any significant misunderstandings reflected in the document. There are a few minor discrepancies, which may be a result of older documentation being used as source material.
  • Section 1.1.2 and 2.1.3
    • The language in reference to the Observation Specification implies a singular mapping between an Allocation Request/ Capability Request to Observation Specification. This is not the case however: an Allocation Request can have multiple Observation Specifications associated with it. A Capability Request also can generate one or more Observation Specifications; two Capability Requests, if in a single Allocation Request, can generation one or more Observation Specifications.
    • Future drafts of the document should refer to the definitions in RD4 as well for more functional and descriptive definitions of the Capability Request Specifications, which are noted in the footnote in 1.1.2  ("These inputs are first introduced and described in the context of TTA in RD3...")
  • Section 1.1.3
    • I think this section muddled a bit the meanings of Capability Request Parameters and Capability Request Specifications (understandably & sympathies).
      
    • In addition to determining the configuration, receiver, backend, pointing pattern, and integration time, the Observing Strategy selects a Calibration Strategy and Scheduling Strategy, which are defined in the April 7th version of RD2 and discussed in the April 8th version of RD4. (S 2.1.3 discusses a ngVLA Observing Strategy too)
      
  • Generally, TTA uses Field Source, not Field Setup; Spectral Specification, not Spectral Setup; and Performance Parameters, not Control and Performance Parameters.
• Dana
  • Some misconceptions or inconsistencies
    1. Facilities in scope.  Currently the VLA, VLBA, GBT, HSA, and GMVA are in scope.
    2. Capabilities.  There can be one or more Capabilities for each Allocation Request.
    3. Observation Specification.  There can be one or more Observation Specifications per Allocation Request.  This concept has evolved; initially we had only one Observation Specification per Allocation Request.
  • Some concepts to discuss
    1. Observing Type vs Observing Mode and Data Products.  We should discuss these concepts w.r.t. ngVLA.
    2. SRDPs.  We should discuss where in the proposal and how these will be specified by the user.
    3. Multiple Capability Requests vs multiple Allocation Requests.  We should discuss these concepts and maybe flesh them out.  Might be better to do this now than later.
    4. Simultaneous multi-band observations.  Is this a new concept?
    5. Multiple sensitivities per beam size.  Related to multiple sub-arrays.  We should discuss if this is an issue or not.

Open Actions:

• Add comments on ngVLA gap analysis document to 2022-05-20 meeting notes.