The Long Wavelength Array (LWA) is a large multi-purpose radio telescope, operating in frequencies between 10 and 88 MHz, designed for both long-wavelength astrophysics and ionospheric science. The LWA will eventually consist of 53 "stations", each consisting of 256 pairs of crossed-dipole antennas whose signals are formed into beams. The Monitoring and Control System (MCS), a subsystem of each LWA station, controls the station's subsystems and also monitors their status. This thesis addresses the interface-related features of MCS. The physical interface of the MCS with each subsystem is a Gigabit Ethernet connection and the interface protocol is User Datagram Protocol (UDP). An analysis of the throughput obtained through the interface using UDP is compared to that achieved using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). It is seen that the throughput with UDP is 15\% better than with TCP, and that UDP is a better choice for the given requirements. Implementation of a new ionospheric calibration scheme requires that the MCS be capable of repointing between astronomical sources on a 5 ms time scale. The rate at which beams can be repointed is analyzed. It is confirmed that MCS is at least 2 orders of magnitude faster than necessary, and is limited by the ethernet network throughput. Python software that facilitates the development and testing of MCS and other subsystems have been developed, and are described. / Master of Science

We used the first station of the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) to observe giant pulses (GPs) from pulsars and search for other radio transients. Using the LWA with a bandwidth of 16 MHz at 39 MHz, we made a 24-hour observation of pulsar radio pulses from PSR B0950+08. The average pulse ux density and pulse width (dominated by "normal" pulses) are consistent with previous studies by others. Using techniques we developed for searching for radio transients, in this observation we detected 119 giant pulses (with signal-to-noise ratios 10 times larger than for the mean pulse). The giant pulses have a narrower temporal width (17.8 ms, on average) than the mean pulse (30.5 ms). Giant pulses occur at a rate of about 5.0 per hour, or 0.035% of the total number of pulse periods. The strength and rate of giant pulses is less than observed by others at ~100 MHz. The probability distribution of the cumulative pulse strength is a power law, but deviates from the Gaussian distribution of normal pulses. These results suggest PSR B0950+08 produces less frequent and weaker giant pulses at 39 MHz than at 100 MHz. We detected no other transients in this observation within a dispersion measure (DM) range from 1 to 90 pc cm³. Furthermore, we conducted observations of giant pulses from PSR B0950+08 in a separate set of observations of 12 hours made simultaneously at 42 and 74 MHz. In these observations we detected a total of 275 at 42 MHz and a total of 465 giant pulses at 74 MHz. Giant pulses with double-peak temporal structure have a shorter peak-to-peak separation compared to the average pulse. Once again, PSR B0950+08 appears to produce less frequent and weaker giant pulses than reported at 100 MHz. Giant pulses are identified with signal-to-noise ratios 10 times larger than for the mean pulse, and the probability distribution of the cumulative pulse strength is a power law, but deviate from the Gaussian distribution of normal pulses, for both frequencies. There were only 128 giant pulses detected simultaneously at 42 and 74 MHz, which implies that more than half of them are narrow-band radio pulses. Using these observations we analyzed the effect of scattering due to the interstellar medium on pulses with signal-to-noise ratio > 7 and the average pulse using a CLEAN-based algorithm, assuming a thin-screen scattering model. The scatter-broadening time constant τ ∝ ν^α, where ν is the observing frequency. The resulting α as calculated from pulses with signal-tonoise ratio > 7 and for the average pulses is found to be α = −1.45±0.14 and −0.14±0.03, respectively. These results indicate differences along the line of sight from a Kolmogorov spectrum for electron density uctuations. We calculated the altitude of the emission region for the pulsar using the dipolar magnetic field model. We found a similar magnitude for the emission region altitudes of normal and giant pulses. We detected no other transient pulses in a wide DM range from 1 to 4990 pc cm⁻³. We also conducted another a 12-hour observational study of PSR B0031−07 at 38 and 74 MHz, simultaneously. Giant pulses were identified with ux densities of a factor of ≥ 90 and ≥ 80 times that of an average pulse, at 38 and 74 MHz. The cumulative pulse strength distribution follows a power law, and has a much more gradual slope than a Gaussian distribution for the normal pulses. We found 158 of the observed pulses at 38 MHz qualified as giant pulses. At 74 MHz a total of 221 of the observed pulses were giant pulses. Only 12 giant pulses were detected within the same pulse period at both 38 and 74 MHz, meaning that the majority of them are narrow-band radio pulses. No other radio transients were detected within a DM range 1 to 4990 pc cm⁻³. We used the same data processing pipeline for observations of pulsar GPs to search within the pulsar observations for fast radio bursts (FRBs). We did not detect any nonpulsar signals with signal-to-noise ratio larger than 10. When the radio transient signals propagate through the interstellar medium, they are affected by propagation effects such as dispersion and scattering. Scattering may limit the detectability of radio transients. By examination of archived pulsar profiles, we investigated the impact of scattering on observed pulses. We utilized a CLEAN-based strategy to decide the scatter-broadening time, τ , under both the thin-screen and uniform-medium scattering models and to determine the scatter-broadening time frequency scaling index, α, where τ ∝ ν^α. In most cases the scattering tail was not large compared to the pulse width at half maximum. Still, we deconvolved 1342 pulse profiles from 347 pulsars assuming a Kolmogorov spectrum of the interstellar medium turbulence. For a subset of 21 pulsars the scattering-boarding tails were suficiently long to be estimated at the lowest frequencies. Since the scatter-broadening times were only determined distinctly for the subset of pulsars at the lowest observed frequency, we were restricted to utilizing upper limits on scatter-broadening times at higher frequencies for the assessment of the scatter-broadening-time frequency dependence. We include three new direct scatter-broadening time measurements at low frequencies and they are consistent with previous studies which were scaled from higher frequencies. Our findings are consistent with a relationship between the DM and scatter-broadening time which can range over more than two orders of magnitude in DM. One of the potential reasons that we did not detect FRBs is that transients may be highly scatter-broadened at low frequencies for high DM values. / Ph. D.