Title: Introduction to the Special Issue on Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy,
Abstract: Advances in astronomy are intimately linked to advances in digital signal
processing (DSP). This special issue is focused upon advances in DSP within
radio astronomy. The trend within that community is to use off-the-shelf
digital hardware where possible and leverage advances in high performance
computing. In particular, graphics processing units (GPUs) and field
programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are being used in place of
application-specific circuits (ASICs); high-speed Ethernet and Infiniband are
being used for interconnect in place of custom backplanes. Further, to lower
hurdles in digital engineering, communities have designed and released
general-purpose FPGA-based DSP systems, such as the CASPER ROACH board, ASTRON
Uniboard and CSIRO Redback board. In this introductory article, we give a brief
historical overview, a summary of recent trends, and provide an outlook on
future directions.