Stream Communication and Computation in the Eight-meter-wavelength Transient Array (ETA) Radio Telescope

The Eight-meter-wavelength Transient Array (ETA) system is a unique implementation of an array-based radio telescope. The instrument is designed to further astronomy by detecting and characterizing dispersed pulses received between 29–47 MHz. To aid data processing of radio signals received through 24 antennas, the ETA system performs real-time stream processing as data is passed from antennas to hard disk storage. The processing includes digital sampling, downconversion, filtering, Fast Fourier Transforms, and beamforming operations and is performed by 28 commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) FPGA boards. Sixteen of the FPGA boards constitute the reconfigurable computing cluster (RCC) which performs the FFT and beamforming operations and is the focus of this thesis. The FPGA-based architecture allows the RCC to provide the high computational and communication throughput required by the ETA system. In addition, the FPGA design allows for a custom processing data path, parallel processing, global synchronization, and rapid development at a low cost.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Martin, Brian Scott

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Patterson, Cameron D.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Simonetti, John H.
• Ellingson, Steven W.

• Astronomy
• Beamforming
• Field programmable gate arrays
• configuration
• Radio

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-10032008-132029

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/35280