When the recording tool connects to the radar it will receive a radar configuration - this is always the first record to be saved in the data file. The tool then requests that the radar starts sending FFT data. Each packet of FFT data (equates to an azimuth of data) is then added to the file. Depending on the radar configuration, each azimuth can contain FFT data of variable length. Reducing the amount of data we transmit from the radar can significantly lower network bandwidth and therefore significantly reduce the size of the recording file. For ease, each file record is prefixed with a total message size, message type and time stamp represented by elapsed system ticks.
When several files are presented as a continuous record each file will start with an un-compressed configuration record in network byte order, this allows software to start playback from any file within a much longer sequence. |
As each message is received from the radar it is recorded to the binary file as File Record. Each record contains a simple header, and the original message payload.
Colossus Protocol |
All records are streamed to the file in order they arrive over the network. To read the data back, applications will need to scan through the records and read in the record size so it can calculate the length of each records.
Each record contains a fixed size header and a payload (Note this header contains little-endian numbers, the payload will contain big-endian). The payload is the network message received from the radar.
Field | Type [Size] | Description |
---|---|---|
Length | int_32t [4] | The size of the message data. Therefore total record size is Record Header Size + Length. The header has a fixed size of 13 bytes. |
Type | uint_8t [1] | The type of message in the message data. See TCP Message Types. |
Top | uint_32t [4] | Upper byte of time, represented as total number of ticks |
Bottom | uint_32t [4] | Lower byte of time, represented as total number of ticks |
Type Field |
Timestamp |
Field | Type [Size] | Description |
---|---|---|
Message Data | uint_8t[Length] | Message data represented as an array of bytes. See TCP Networking for information on each message type. The total length of this payload is provided as the first field in the header. |
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