Data Provenance and Management in Radio Astronomy: A Stream Computing Approach

New approaches for data provenance and data management (DPDM) are required for mega science projects like the Square Kilometer Array, characterized by extremely large data volume and intense data rates, therefore demanding innovative and highly efficient computational paradigms. In this context, we explore a stream-computing approach with the emphasis on the use of accelerators. In particular, we make use of a new generation of high performance stream-based parallelization middleware known as InfoSphere Streams. Its viability for managing and ensuring interoperability and integrity of signal processing data pipelines is demonstrated in radio astronomy. IBM InfoSphere Streams embraces the stream-computing paradigm. It is a shift from conventional data mining techniques (involving analysis of existing data from databases) towards real-time analytic processing. We discuss using InfoSphere Streams for effective DPDM in radio astronomy and propose a way in which InfoSphere Streams can be utilized for large antennae arrays. We present a case-study: the InfoSphere Streams implementation of an autocorrelating spectrometer, and using this example we discuss the advantages of the stream-computing approach and the utilization of hardware accelerators

Distributed image reconstruction for very large arrays in radio astronomy

Current and future radio interferometric arrays such as LOFAR and SKA are characterized by a paradox. Their large number of receptors (up to millions) allow theoretically unprecedented high imaging resolution. In the same time, the ultra massive amounts of samples makes the data transfer and computational loads (correlation and calibration) order of magnitudes too high to allow any currently existing image reconstruction algorithm to achieve, or even approach, the theoretical resolution. We investigate here decentralized and distributed image reconstruction strategies which select, transfer and process only a fraction of the total data. The loss in MSE incurred by the proposed approach is evaluated theoretically and numerically on simple test cases.Comment: Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop (SAM), 2014 IEEE 8th, Jun 2014, Coruna, Spain. 201