of antenna elements such as 12 more than likely in a phase array in which the antennas follow a predetermined pattern of interference in this particular embodiment the antenna elements have received signals and stored the data from those signals in the local memory the central processing facility has a required beam specification from the phased array defined in terms of a summation of data streams from selected ones of individual antenna elements with coefficients and phase delays depending upon the position of the elements to a reference point and a particular time the central processing facility sends a packet 26 out into the network with the description of the required beam shape or a list of elements from which it needs data and may include an operation that needs the data such as summation etc the operation may require the node to append its data to the payload of the packet or perform a computation using its data in addition to the other data etc upon processing the packet the node then updates the packet to create an updated packet 28 and routes the packet to another node on the list or to a node at a particular position etc in some instances the node may determine it is the final node and send the packet back to the central processing facility in processing the packet in this embodiment the node 12 may read the description or specification calculates how the data stream should be incorporated retrieves the appropriate data for the designated time.