A high-speed data recorder and replay equipment has been developed for reliable high-data-rate recording to disk media. It solves problems with slow or faulty disks, multiple disk insertions, high-altitude operation, reliable performance using COTS hardware, and long-term maintenance and upgrade path challenges.

The current generation data recorders used within the VLBI community are aging, special-purpose machines that are both slow (do not meet today’s requirements) and are very expensive to maintain and operate. Furthermore, they are not easily upgraded to take advantage of commercial technology development, and are not scalable to multiple 10s of Gbit/s data rates required by new applications.

The innovation provides a software-defined, high-speed data recorder that is scalable with technology advances in the commercial space. It maximally utilizes current technologies without being locked to a particular hardware platform. The innovation also provides a cost-effective way of streaming large amounts of data from sensors to disk, enabling many applications to store raw sensor data and perform post and signal processing offline.

This recording system will be applicable to many applications needing real-world, high-speed data collection, including electronic warfare, software-defined radar, signal history storage of multispectral sensors, development of autonomous vehicles, and more.

This work was done by Mikael Taveniku of XCube 7 for Goddard Space Flight Center. For further information, contact the Goddard Innovative Partnerships Office at (301) 286- 5810. GSC-16481-1