Reconfigurable signal probing mechanism for a transmutable telecom system

We present a reconfigurable signal probing mechanism for a transmutable telecom system that consists of several function-programmable boards. The signal probing mechanism is installed in one of the programmable boards. It is composed of FPGAs and programmable interconnect switches. The feature of this mechanism is that any bit-stream data in the telecom system can be probed on the fly by appropriately configuring the FPGAs and switches. In addition, if some specialized circuits are implemented in the FPGAs, we can realize a dedicated data prober which can extract structured data such as the ATM cell and IP packet, not simple bit stream. This is one of the most unique features in our signal probing mechanism. This paper describes the probing mechanism as well as its applications.