The HFI DPC

The HFI DPC has been organized into different "Levels": 1, 2, 3, 4 and "S". In brief, during operations, L1 feeds the database resulting in time-ordered information (TOI) objects. L2 is the core of the processing, which turns TOIs into clean calibrated sky maps. L3 transforms these maps at specific frequencies into more scientific products, like catalogues, maps and spectra of astrophysical components. L3 can rely on simulation provided by the LS, while L4 refers to delivering the DPC products to ESA. This processing relies on dedicated software and hardware infrastructures developed pre-launch.

Level 1: building the reference database during flight operations

(L1): consists in receiving the telemetry and ancillary data files and ingesting them into the DPC database. This involves decompressing, in some cases changing data formats, computing the time of individual data samples from the time of the compression slices, but otherwise no processing proper. Other steps are:

• data ingestion (science, HK, ancillary, other?)
• construction of ToS in science data group
• pointing interpolation
• construction of other TOI and ROI objects from AHF, ...

This is further described in the Pre-processing section

Level 2: converting temporal information into clean calibrated maps

(L2): this is where the data are processed from timelines into maps. The main processing steps are

• Timeline (or Time-Ordered Information = TOI) processing, which includes conversion from ADUs to engineering units (Volts), demodulation, deglitching, conversion from engineering to physical units (Watts), removal of known systematic effects (non-linearities, 4K lines, Jumps, ring flagging), removal of the instrumental signature (time transfer function), temporal noise Estimation. Details here.
• Pointing and beam of each detector. See section Pointing&Beams.
• map-making & photomoetric calibration: projecting the TOIs onto all-sky maps, etc. See section Map-making.
• Characterisation/validation through angular power spectra. See section PowerSpectra.
• Overal HFI data validation, through difference tests, comparison to detailed simulations, etc., See section HFI-Validation
• The resulting data characteristics are given in section Summary

Level 3: Basic analyses of (Level 2) Frequency maps

(L3): This is where the data in the form of frequency maps are converted to catalogues and full sky astrophysical component maps. Much of this is done in common with the LFI DPC, and is further described in the HFI/LFI common sections

Level 4 : Delivering results

Level 4 is the "Archive Level". No processing done, but rather exporting, reformating, documenting.

Level S : A common HFI/LFI simulation software

Level S is the so-called "Simulation Level" software suite common to both consortia, which, given a sky model (generated by the Planck sky model, PSM), detectors pointing and beams, generates the infalling power on each detector. It can also provide a simplified description of eg. the noise. It is further described in the HFI/LFI common section. HFI specific developments (configuration control & MC bench, specific effects like 4K lines, glitches, ADC non-linearity, etc.) are described in the HFI data validation section.

HFI DPC Infrastructures

The HFI Data Processing Centre can be thought of as a centralized backbone providing hardware and software infrastructures to a relatively large number of geographically distributed groups of developers and other R&D groups in the HFI and LFI core teams

Further details were given in the HFI data processing paper of Planck early results series. In particular:

• Code and configuration management can be found at Planck early paper VI .
• Data management at Planck early paper VI .
• Instrument model (IMO) database at Planck early paper VI .
• Data flow management at Planck early paper VI .
• Hardware at Planck early paper VI .
  

  HFI reference platform in the IAP basement