A new architecture is presented for a Networked Signal Processing System(NSPS) suitable for handling the real-time signal processing of multi-elementradio telescopes. In this system, a multi-element radio telescope is viewed asan application of a multi-sensor, data fusion problem which can be decomposedinto a general set of computing and network components for which a practicaland scalable architecture is enabled by current technology. The need for such asystem arose in the context of an ongoing program for reconfiguring the OotyRadio Telescope (ORT) as a programmable 264-element array, which will enableseveral new observing capabilities for large scale surveys on this maturetelescope. For this application, it is necessary to manage, route and combinelarge volumes of data whose real-time collation requires large I/O bandwidthsto be sustained. Since these are general requirements of many multi-sensorfusion applications, we first describe the basic architecture of the NSPS interms of a Fusion Tree before elaborating on its application for the ORT. Thepaper addresses issues relating to high speed distributed data acquisition,Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based peer-to-peer networks supportingsignificant on-the fly processing while routing, and providing a last mileinterface to a typical commodity network like Gigabit Ethernet. The system isfundamentally a pair of two co-operative networks, among which one is part of acommodity high performance computer cluster and the other is based onCommercial-Off The-Shelf (COTS) technology with support from software/firmwarecomponents in the public domain.
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