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Contents 1 MARIACHI Data Acquisition 1.1 MARIACHI Scintillator Data 1.2 Front End 1.3 MARIACHI Radar Data

MARIACHI Data Acquisition

The MARIACHI experiment requires locating different detectors, radar stations, and sensors in strategic places on Long Island and beyond. The experimental data collected by the Radar and Shower detectors will be transferred from the remote sites and stored on the MARIACHI server located at Stony Brook University. The data will be transfered securely using Grid computing tools.

MARIACHI is a member of the Open Science Grid (OSG). Since authentication within GRID software uses x.509 certificates (like those used by secure web sites), each end user (scientific) has to participate and be registered and authenticated in our MARIACHI Virtual Organization (VO). As part of OSG we will be installing and using GRID software from the Globus Toolkit, the Virtual Data Toolkit (VDT) and the Open Science Grid.

MARIACHI Scintillator Data

Ground Array Detector data is collected from all sites. At each site, when a five-fold scintillator coincidence is detected, the GPS unit is triggered and its time read out. These times are stored in a log file and sent (via HTTP) to the central MARIACHI processing site daily. Whenever a new event is logged, a message is sent to update the system-wide status display. In addition, every 5 minutes, a status message is sent from each site letting the system-wide status processing know that the site is still active. The muon flux rate is also part of the data stream and the integrated number of counts for 10 minutes will be read and transferred to server.

As of June 2006, four sites have started taking measurements and one has begun transmitting them via the Internet to the MARIACHI server.

Front End

We have chosen LabView and Linux as the main engine for data readout and operating system.

MARIACHI Radar Data

The MARIACHI radar receivers are being set up at Stony Brook University, Suffolk Community College and Brookhaven National Lab.

MARIACHI will use a broadband antenna and receivers attached to a computer to gather data at different frequencies simultaneously. The operating system initially required by the radio receiver card is a MS Windows environment, but we envision developing a program (driver and graphical interface) to control the radio receiver under Linux platform, both to take advantage of the robustness and manageability of Linux, and to allow other GRID software to be employed.

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