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Frame builder emulation (Fbe) library

v1r2

Author:

Andrea Vicere'

Introduction

The Fbe is a simple library to be used to generate frame files starting from different sources, including data in memory and on files.

It is not designed for speed, but for simplicity of use, to the benefit of people willing to create frames starting from their favorite data format.

It can help you in three ways:

1. You can use the Ready to use provided to quickly generate frames starting from data in ASCII format or from your C,C++ code.
2. You can tailor one of the examples to produce data starting from your data generating code.
3. You can use the functions in the library to do more complex things.

The library is written in ANSI-C and it is designed to be portable.

It depends currently on the Fr library which is part of the LIGOtools.

Applicable documents

On the frame format

Specification of a Common Data Frame Format for Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors (IGWD) LIGO DCC T970130-D, LIGO Data Group, VIRGO Data Acquisition Group.

On the detector positions and orientations

Interferometers: Gravitational Wave Detector Sites, Bruce Allen, 1997.

Resonant bars: International Gravitational Event Collaboration.

Usage

This manual is divided in several sections:

• Section Installation discusses how to download, compile and install the Fbe for your platform. However, you should ignore this section if you are using the LIGOtools version of Fbe.
• Section Ready to use describes two tools based on this library which can be already sufficient for your purposes. It also refers to an example of code which can be easily tailored to user's needs.
• Section Library tells what are the main structures available for producing frames.
• Section Input_output documents two more structures which can be used to read data from files.
• Section Using the Fbe library for your code gives a minimal advice for C users.
• Section History documents the changes through the code versions.

Future work

Please be advised that this is not a stable project.

I anticipate several changes in the near future:

• a C++ API shall be provided.
• It shall be made possible to link the code with the LIGO framecpp library, in C++.

Contacts

Please contact Andrea Vicere' for help with the library and for reporting bugs.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to

• Benoit Mours, author of the Frame library.
• Didier Verkindt, author of the Frame interface in the VIRGO simulation program. That code was the starting point for this work.

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