Fault Tolerant Digital Signal Processing (DSP), Phase I

This document proposes that a network routing protocol, such as the popular Internet Protocol (IP), can be combined with high speed switching fabrics to create a hardware independent routing environment for software radio. The flexible routing provided by such a network layer would allow signal streams to be dynamically routed (and re-routed) between computational elements. This would allow software radio designers to build flexible, fault tolerant signal processing chains for many applications and hardware implementations. This is innovative because conventional IP implementations cannot meet the performance requirements (throughput, jitter, latency) of software radio data streams. The innovation of this research stems from the unique combination of software radio development requirements, advances in network and transport layer designs to support high-speed switching fabrics, and the inherent capabilities provided by IP.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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