A distributed, hardware reconfigurable and packet switched real-time control and data acquisition system

The architecture of a synchronized event-based control and data acquisition system that aims to improve significantly the performance of actual systems is presented. The design explores recent developments in data transport, signal processing and system synchronization. Data transport between the acquisition, processing and storing devices and at backplane level will be performed by InfiniBand, a low latency packet switched network standard. Data processing algorithms will be performed in a mixture of digital signal processors and reconfigurable field programmable gate arrays. Both devices will be programmed from a descriptive high-level mathematical language. Acquisition synchronization, data stamping and event management will be performed through a specialized low latency synchronous optical network for the time critical signals. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.