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

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dc.contributor.authorMartin, Brian Scotten
dc.contributor.committeechairPatterson, Cameron D.en
dc.contributor.committeememberSimonetti, John H.en
dc.contributor.committeememberEllingson, Steven W.en
dc.contributor.departmentElectrical and Computer Engineeringen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T20:46:19Zen
dc.date.adate2008-11-11en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T20:46:19Zen
dc.date.issued2008-09-12en
dc.date.rdate2008-11-11en
dc.date.sdate2008-10-03en
dc.description.abstractThe 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.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Scienceen
dc.identifier.otheretd-10032008-132029en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-10032008-132029/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/35280en
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartBSM_thesis_v2.pdfen
dc.relation.haspartBSM_thesis.pdfen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectAstronomyen
dc.subjectBeamformingen
dc.subjectField programmable gate arraysen
dc.subjectconfigurationen
dc.subjectRadioen
dc.titleStream Communication and Computation in the Eight-meter-wavelength Transient Array (ETA) Radio Telescopeen
dc.typeThesisen
thesis.degree.disciplineElectrical Engineeringen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen

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