System Specifications

Digital Radio Equipment

  • NOTE: ALL cables are phase matched unless specified otherwise

  • 17x Ettus USRP N200 (16 and 1 spare)

    • 17x Ettus LFTX daughterboards

    • 17x Ettus LFRX daughterboards

    • 17x Custom TXIO boards (for transmitter interfacing)

  • 1x Ettus Octoclock-g (includes GPSDO)

  • 2x Ettus Octoclock

  • 51x ~8 1/4” SMA bulkhead Female to Male RG-316 for daughterboards (for 17x N200s, 3 cables each)

  • 18x 48” SMA Male to Male RG-316 for PPS signals (2x from octoclock-g to octoclocks, 16x for N200s)

  • 18x 48” SMA Male to Male RG-316 for 10MHz REF signals (2x from octoclock-g to octoclocks, 16x for N200s)

  • GPS Antenna (Male SMA connector)

  • 17x sets of main array receive path circuitry (16 and 1 spare)

  • 5x sets of interferometer array receive path circuitry (4 and 1 spare)

  • Cabling and power for receive path circuitry

Borealis Control Computer

Recommended Computer Hardware: (Current control computer hardware as of September 2025)

  • Case: Rosewill 4U Server Chassis Case

  • Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX Motherboard

  • CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K

  • CPU Cooler: ASUS ROG Strix LC II 360

  • GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti

  • Memory: 2x 16GB DDR5

  • SSD Storage: 1x 2TB NVMe SSD

  • HDD Storage: 2x 18TB 3.5” NAS HDD combined in RAID 1

  • Power Supply: 1000W Gold rated

  • Network Card: 10G Dual-Port SFP+ PCIe 3.0 x 8

  • Serial Card: Modified serial card for PPS input

Minimum Required Computer Hardware:

  • Motherboard: CPU compatible, with PCIe slots for both GPU and network card

  • CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K

  • CPU Cooler: Liquid cooler with 240mm radiator

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

  • Memory: 24 GB DDR4

  • SSD Storage: 256 GB SSD (OS partition)

  • HDD Storage: 1 TB HDD (data partition)

  • Power Supply: 1000W Gold rated

  • Network Card: 10G PCIe 3.0 x 8

Networking

Below is the current network setup for the SuperDARN Canada radar sites:

  • 1x FS S3900 48 Port 1GbE switch. Supports 10Mbps (for octoclock), 100Mbps, 1Gbps (for N200s), and 10Gbps (for control computer) speeds

  • 19x SSTP Cat6a 7ft cables (16x for the N200s, 3x for the octoclocks)

  • 2x SFP+ 15ft Optical cables (for Borealis computer)

  • Various Cat5e cables for peripheral network connected devices

Borealis requires at least Cat6a cables for connecting the N200s. Using less-shielded cables will cause communication errors between the N200s. Cat5e and non-SSTP cables were tried during testing and shown to not work - network cables need to be tested as not all cables seem to work reliably.

This is just one network setup that works for Borealis, not the only one that works - other network switches and cables can be used instead.

Rack and Cabling

  • 1x 4-post 42U rack

  • 2x 12-outlet rackmount power strip

  • 2x APC AP7900B rackmount PDU

  • 4x custom-made USRP N200 rackmount shelves

  • 1x rackmount shelf for interferometer pre-amps