VLBI标准接口的发展

VLBI标准接口是近年来在VLBI技术中诞生的一个新概念,它旨在解决多年来各VLBI数据传输系统不兼容的问题．该文阐述了VLBI数据传输系统的发展历史,包括传统的记录／回放系统和新兴的网络数据传输两方面的内容;说明了VLBI标准接口的作用和意义;并分别介绍了VLBI标准接口规范3方面的内容:VLBI标准接口件规范(VSI-H)、VLBI标准接口软件规范(VSI-S)和VLBI标准接口网络规范(VSI-E)．

The Development of VLBI Standard Interface

Since the beginnings of VLBI in the late 1960's, a large segment of VLBI instrumentation development has been directed towards the development of specialized data systems to cater to the extreme demands of both bandwidth and total data quantity that VLBI demands. Several generations of specialized data systems have been developed by the user community itself. However, most of them are incompatible with each other, which has long been recognized as posing a serious obstacle to the realization of the full potential of VLBI observations. VLBI standard interface is a new concept in the recent year's development of VLBI technology, aiming to solve the incompatibility of various VLBI data system. It is a common interface standard which would allow observations recorded on different VLBI data systems to be processed at a common correlator. The paper reviewed the evolution of VLBI data system, including both the traditional record/playback system and the newly coming up e-VLBI. The necessity of VLBI standard interface and how it is developed is showed in detail. Three aspects of VLBI standard interface specification are introduced: 1) a hardware definition, VSI-H; 2) a software definition, VSI-S; 3) a definition which should help transferring VLBI via networks, VSI-E.