Systems for Robustness and Scalability

System optimization for extensibility and robustness is a fundamental challenge of engineering dis-ciplines. Traditional approaches have aimed to optimize cost and performance of a system at a given point in its lifespan. However, as systems evolve with increasing resources and load, system extensibility has to be included in the earliest stages of planning and deployment. In this thesis, we study the staged deployment of large telescope array configurations as an optimization problem subject to cost, performance and network robustness. The LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) is the world’s largest telescope array, deploying in its full design 25000 antennas over 350km in diameter in Northern Europe. These are deployed in clusters, and planned to be built in stages, with current funding allowing for 15000 arrays over 100km. This new generation of telescope arrays requires new system design principles and modelling techniques