A High-Performance, Direct-to-Disk Video Recording System Based on the Fibre Channel Protocol

Since its invention, the video camera has been a valuable diagnostic tool for a wide variety of military, scientific and industrial applications. Recently with the advent of digital video and the growth associated with mass media and teleconferencing, the opportunity exists to take advantage of an emerging technology to develop a high performance data acquisition system which is capable of recording high resolution video images direcdy to a Fibre Channel network. By incorporating the Fibre Channel protocol into a flexible data acquisition architecture, a digital recorder can be developed with the ability to communicate directly with either a mass storage device, a display device or a variety of computer systems which support the Fibre Channel protocol. Such a device has been proposed as part of an automated video scoring system for the Aberdeen Test Center. A video scoring system has been developed which can control and record a minimum of four megapixel cameras via a Fibre Channel network. In addition, automated target scoring can be implemented by using several algorithms developed for radar and surveillance applications. A flexible design has been achieved allowing the recording unit to meet the immediate and future needs of the Aberdeen Test Center, as well as a variety of military and civilian recording applications. BENEFITS: The high-degree of flexibility designed into the direct-to-disk recorder allows it to be used for numerous data acquisition applications. The choice of Fibre Channel as the communication protocol allows the recorder to be implemented into any computer network operating this protocol and allows high resolution images to be transmitted over a digital network in real-time.