8.1 General overview on channel mapping

Before doing any analysis, it is required to define some channel settings in the Channel Mapping card, which is accessible from both the Operational Data module and the FRF Data module. Only channels defined as Master Channels in the Channel Mapping card can be used for the analyses in the Analyze module.

You can crate Master channels from:

• Operational dataset channels.
• FRF dataset channels.
• Virtual Point channels.

In most cases, it is easier to use the channels from the FRF data as the Master Channels, for two reasons:

1. If the FRFs come from a DIRAC export, the channel types (e.g. indicator, target) can already be set ahead of time and imported directly into SOURCE;
2. For several analyses, the forces from the FRFs need to be included as Master Channels, so it is convenient to just set all FRF channels (and reference channels) as the Master Channels.

Thus, the most common workflow involves setting the FRF data channels as Master Channels and then mapping the operational data channels to these master channels. This workflow is described next, but variations to this workflow are certainly possible depending on the specific data collected and the desired analysis.