Haystack software

MIT Haystack Observatory invites the community to use its open source software. The philosophy behind open source is to encourage mutual benefit via collaborative development and improvements. Haystack open source software is available through various open source licenses.

Haystack open-source software is available through GitHub.

GITHUB

Software-defined radio

Haystack is heavily invested in the use of software-defined radio (SDR) technology and techniques, including the development of SDR tools, activities within the larger SDR community, and educational programs.

radioconda logo, with a green snake weaving through the word radioconda

Radioconda: a cross-platform installer for open-source software radio packages using the conda package manager. This is a “batteries-included” platform—meaning that everything you need is right there—for SDR enthusiasts and researchers that greatly simplifies the software installation of many popular tools such as GNURadio and radio driver software such as UHD.

Digital RF logo

Digital RF: a software package that contains a format to save archive raw RF data with the required metadata. The Digital RF format uses hierarchical h5 files to allow for consistent and fast look up of samples regardless of dataset size. This package can be installed using the conda or pip package managers.

Incoherent scatter radar applications

Haystack runs the Millstone Hill Incoherent Scatter Radar as part of our National Science Foundation (NSF) facilities award. Researchers here have developed several open-source packages to analyze and simulate these systems.

MIPS: The MIT Incoherent Scatter Performance Simulator (MIPS) is a tool for simulating the performance of ISR systems and networks.

ISRSpectrum: A software package for calculating the incoherent scatter spectrum from first-principles physics using the framework shown in Kudeki and Milla 2010. This Python package can be installed using the conda or pip package manager.

SimISR: This package creates simulated ISR data at the voltage level in the Digital RF format, which is useful for creating synthetic test data for radar pipelines.

Astronomy and geodesy software

"HOPS" next to a logo image that looks like the radome inside a beer hop

HOPS: The Haystack Observatory Postprocessing System (HOPS) is a software package designed to analyze the data generated by DiFX VLBI correlators. The Haystack Observatory Postprocessing System (HOPS) is a software package designed to analyze the data generated by DiFX VLBI correlators. It is written in C for Linux computers, and emphasizes quality-control aspects of data processing. It sits between the correlator and an image-processing and/or geodetic-processing package, and performs basic fringe-fitting, data editing, problem diagnosis, and correlator support functions. 

Interferometric imaging algorithms: Haystack has developed new imaging techniques, collectively referred to as regularized maximum likelihood (RML) methods. RML methods have proven to be better than traditional imaging methods, and often provide modest super-resolutions. SMILI is one of three imaging software packages used to create the first-ever picture of a black hole. 

Outreach and education

srt-py: A Python package for the Small Radio Telescope (SRT), developed by Haystack Observatory to serve as an educational tool for universities and colleges for teaching astronomy and radio technology.