  A substantial amount of important scientific information is contained within
astronomical data at the submillimeter and far-infrared (FIR) wavelengths,
including information regarding dusty galaxies, galaxy clusters, and
star-forming regions; however, these wavelengths are among the least-explored
fields in astronomy because of the technological difficulties involved in such
research. Over the past 20 years, considerable efforts have been devoted to
developing submillimeter- and millimeter-wavelength astronomical instruments
and telescopes.
  The number of detectors is an important property of such instruments and is
the subject of the current study. Future telescopes will require as many as
hundreds of thousands of detectors to meet the necessary requirements in terms
of the field of view, scan speed, and resolution. A large pixel count is one
benefit of the development of multiplexable detectors that use kinetic
inductance detector (KID) technology.
  This paper presents the development of all aspects of the readout electronics
for a KID-based instrument, which enabled one of the largest detector counts
achieved to date in submillimeter-/millimeter-wavelength imaging arrays: a
total of 2304 detectors. The work presented in this paper had been implemented
in the MUltiwavelength Submillimeter Inductance Camera (MUSIC), a instrument
for the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) between 2013 and 2015.
