TopSim is a telescope observation and data post-processing simulator, based on a fork of Robert Lexis' CloudSimPy. The intention of TopSim is to provide an end-to-end view of telescope observations, data-archival, and the subsequent processing of observation data products, with a focus on the mid-term timeline commonly used in telescope semester plans. The main intention of the simulator is to test new workflow planning and scheduling techniques designed for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and its precursor telescope, the Australian Square Kilomere Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

TopSim is being actively developed by Ryan Bunney, a PhD Candidate at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), in Perth, Western Australia.

TopSim uses the Simpy discrete-event simulation framework; in addition to this, the following packages are necessary to use the full feature set of TopSim:

• numpy
• Networkx
• matplotlib
• pandas

TOpSim's tests and sample simulations also use the SHADOW scheduling framework, which can be found at https://github.com/myxie/shadow.

It is best to install TOpSim using a virtual environment from virtualenv . Running and installation using the setup.py file should be enough to ensure that you are able to use the full codebase:

python setup.py install

To test all requirements are installed, run the tests using:

python -m unittest discover test