Argus: An L-band array for detection of astronomical transients

"Argus" is a concept for an L-band radio telescope that is designed primarily for the detection of wideband pulses associated with naturally occurring transients, as well narrowband signals that might indicate technological sources. Argus achieves an instantaneous FOV covering most of the visible sky using an array consisting of large numbers of low-gain antennas. In the Argus architecture, the output of each antenna is individually digitized, and all subsequent processing occurs in the digital domain so as not to prematurely limit the FOV. This paper reports on a development project with the goal of implementing a small prototype Argus system. Our system uses a novel array signal processing architecture which facilitates flexible scaling in terms of number of antennas and processed bandwidth, and also supports the addition of special, user-defined features on-the-fly, as changes to software or firmware.