28 research outputs found
LOW LATENCY ON-BOARD DATA HANDLING FOR EARTH OBSERVATION SATELLITES USING OFF-THE-SHELF COMPONENTS
Satellite Earth Observation (EO) is nowadays receiving significant attention. In this regard, the latency of EO product provision to the ground segment is undoubtedly among the first key performance indicators for these systems. The European Union Horizon 2020 EO-ALERT project aims at overcoming the limitations of traditional Near Real-Time (NRT) onboard data chain architectures by moving all the critical processing tasks on the flight segment and accelerating them using high-performance commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices. The resulting architecture minimizes the amount of transmitted data and eliminates ground-based data processing from the EO data chain, hence achieving actual real-time product delivery in less than 5 min with optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. This paper presents the performance benefits of a mixed software-hardware design of the CPU Scheduling, Compression, Encryption, and Data Handling (CS-CEDH) Subsystem responsible for data compression and encryption as well as data routing and scheduling tasks. Compared to a software-only solution, the exploited High-Level Synthesis (HLS) methodology enables 5 to 7-fold speed-up in onboard image compression and encryption tasks and 2 to 5-fold reduction in the contribution of the CS-CEDH Subsystem to the overall onboard image data chain while contributing by less than 1 s to the delivery of the alerts to the end-user
High-Level Synthesis of a Single/Multi-Band Optical and SAR Image Compression and Encryption Hardware Accelerator
Transmitting images from earth observation satellites to ground is a major challenge, and a compression/encryption stage is actually mandatory. Development of hardware accelerators is highly recommended, both to relieve the software from such demanding task, and to improve performance, aiming at quasi-real-time data processing. To this end, we discuss the design, development, deployment and test of a FPGA-based accelerator, featuring a lossless and lossy (near-lossless) compression, including the data encryption too. Its architecture is well suited for different image types, including single- and multi-band optical and SAR images and can be fully run-time configurable. Measured performance showed a throughput of 10 Msamples/s, in agreement with related state-of-the-art works, focused on lossless compression only
Detection of Radial Surface Brightness Fluctuation and Color Gradients in elliptical galaxies with ACS
We study surface brightness fluctuations (SBF) in a sample of 8 elliptical
galaxies using Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Wide Field Channel (WFC) data
drawn from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive. SBF magnitudes in the
F814W bandpass, and galaxy colors from F814W, F435W, and F606W images -- when
available -- are presented. Galaxy surface brightness profiles are determined
as well. We present the first SBF--broadband color calibration for the ACS/WFC
F814W bandpass, and (relative) distance moduli estimates for 7 of our galaxies.
We detect and study in detail the SBF variations within individual galaxies
as a probe of possible changes in the underlying stellar populations.
Inspecting both the SBF and color gradients in comparison to model predictions,
we argue that SBF, and SBF-gradients, can in principle be used for unraveling
the different evolutionary paths taken by galaxies, though a more comprehensive
study of this issue would be required. We confirm that the radial variation of
galaxy stellar population properties should be mainly connected to the presence
of radial chemical abundance gradients, with the outer galaxy regions being
more metal poor than the inner ones.Comment: 47 pages, 13 figures, ApJ, accepte
VEGAS: A VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey. II. Photometric study of giant ellipticals and their stellar halos
Observations of diffuse starlight in the outskirts of galaxies are thought to
be a fundamental source of constraints on the cosmological context of galaxy
assembly in the CDM model. Such observations are not trivial because
of the extreme faintness of such regions. In this work, we investigate the
photometric properties of six massive early type galaxies (ETGs) in the VEGAS
sample (NGC 1399, NGC 3923, NGC 4365, NGC 4472, NGC 5044, and NGC 5846) out to
extremely low surface brightness levels, with the goal of characterizing the
global structure of their light profiles for comparison to state-of-the-art
galaxy formation models. We carry out deep and detailed photometric mapping of
our ETG sample taking advantage of deep imaging with VST/OmegaCAM in the g and
i bands. By fitting the light profiles, and comparing the results to
simulations of elliptical galaxy assembly, we identify signatures of a
transition between "relaxed" and "unrelaxed" accreted components and can
constrain the balance between in situ and accreted stars. The very good
agreement of our results with predictions from theoretical simulations
demonstrates that the full VEGAS sample of ETGs will allow us to use
the distribution of diffuse light as a robust statistical probe of the
hierarchical assembly of massive galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic
Advanced Data Chain Technologies for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting On-Board Processing for Rapid Civil Alerts
The growing number of planned Earth Observation (EO) satellites, together with the increase in payload resolution and swath, brings to the fore the generation of unprecedented volumes of data that needs to be downloaded, processed and distributed with low latency. This creates a severe bottleneck problem, which overloads ground infrastructure, communications to ground, and hampers the provision of EO products to the End User with the required performances. The European H2020 EO-ALERT project (http://eo-alert-h2020.eu/), proposes the definition of next-generation EO missions by developing an on-board high speed EO data processing chain, based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves optimised key EO data processing elements from the ground segment to on-board the satellite. EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, reaching latencies below 1 minute in some scenarios. The proposed architecture solves the above challenges through a combination of innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications link. Namely, the architecture introduces innovative technological solutions, including on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for generation of alerts (EO products) using Artificial Intelligence (AI), high-speed on-board avionics, on-board data compression and encryption using AI and reconfigurable high data rate communication links to ground including a separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage. Those key technologies have been studied, developed, implemented in software/hardware (SW/HW) and verified against previously established technologies requirements to meet the identified user needs. The paper presents an overview of the development of the innovative solutions defined during the project for each of the above mentioned technological areas and the results of the testing campaign of the individual SW/HW implementations within the context of two operational scenarios: ship detection and extreme weather observation (nowcasting), both requiring a high responsiveness to events to reduce the response time to few hours, or even to minutes, after an emergency situation arises. The technologies have been experimentally evaluated during the project using relevant EO historical sensor data. The results demonstrate the maturity of the technologies, having now reached TRL 4-5. Generally, the results show that, when implemented using COTS components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can generate and delivery globally EO products/alerts with a latency lower than five minutes, which demonstrates the viability of the EO-ALERT concept. The paper also discusses the implementation on an Avionic Test Bench (ATB) for the validation of the integrated technologies chain
The NESTORE e-Coach: Designing a Multi-Domain Pathway to Well-Being in Older Age
This article describes the coaching strategies of the NESTORE e-coach, a virtual coach for promoting healthier lifestyles in older age. The novelty of the NESTORE project is the definition of a multi-domain personalized pathway where the e-coach accompanies the user throughout different structured and non-structured coaching activities and recommendations. The article also presents the design process of the coaching strategies, carried out including older adults from four European countries and experts from the different health domains, and the results of the tests carried out with 60 older adults in Italy, Spain and The Netherlands
EO-ALERT: A Novel Architecture for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting Rapid Civil Alerts
Satellite Earth Observation (EO) data is ubiquitously used in many applications, providing basic services to
society, such as environment monitoring, emergency management and civilian security. Due to the increasing request
of EO products by the market, the classical EO data chain generates a severe bottleneck problem, further exacerbated
in constellations. A huge amount of EO raw data generated on-board the satellite must be transferred to ground,
slowing down the EO product availability, increasing latency, and hampering the growth of applications in
accordance with the increased user demand.
This paper provides an overview of the results achieved by the EO-ALERT project (http://eo-alert-h2020.eu/), an
H2020 European Union research activity led by DEIMOS Space. EO-ALERT proposes the definition and
development of the next-generation EO data processing chain, based on a novel flight segment architecture that
moves optimised key EO data processing elements from the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of
delivering the EO products to the end user with very low latency (quasi-real-time). EO-ALERT achieves, globally,
latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, reaching latencies below 1 minute in some scenarios.
The proposed architecture solves the above challenges through a combination of innovations in the on-board
elements of the data chain and the communications. Namely, the architecture introduces innovative technological
solutions, including on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the
generation of alerts (EO products) using Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board data compression and encryption using
AI, high-speed on-board avionics, and reconfigurable high data rate communication links to ground, including a
separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage.
The paper presents the proposed architecture, its performance and hardware, considering two different user
scenarios; ship detection and extreme weather observation/nowcasting. The results show that, when implemented
using COTS components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can deliver alerts to ground
with latency lower than five minutes, for both SAR and Optical missions, demonstrating the viability of the EOALERT
concept and architecture. The paper also discusses the implementation on an avionics test bench for
testing the architecture with real EO data, with the aim of demonstrating that it can meet the requirements of the
considered scenarios in terms of detection performance and provides technologies at a high TRL (4-5). When
proven, this will open unprecedented opportunities for the exploitation of civil EO products, especially in latency
sensitive scenarios, such as disaster management
The ATLAS3D project - XXIX : The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images
Date of Acceptance: 25/09/2014Galactic archaeology based on star counts is instrumental to reconstruct the past mass assembly of Local Group galaxies. The development of new observing techniques and data reduction, coupled with the use of sensitive large field of view cameras, now allows us to pursue this technique in more distant galaxies exploiting their diffuse low surface brightness (LSB) light. As part of the ATLAS3D project, we have obtained with the MegaCam camera at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope extremely deep, multiband images of nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs). We present here a catalogue of 92 galaxies from the ATLAS3D sample, which are located in low- to medium-density environments. The observing strategy and data reduction pipeline, which achieve a gain of several magnitudes in the limiting surface brightness with respect to classical imaging surveys, are presented. The size and depth of the survey are compared to other recent deep imaging projects. The paper highlights the capability of LSB-optimized surveys at detecting new prominent structures that change the apparent morphology of galaxies. The intrinsic limitations of deep imaging observations are also discussed, among those, the contamination of the stellar haloes of galaxies by extended ghost reflections, and the cirrus emission from Galactic dust. The detection and systematic census of fine structures that trace the present and past mass assembly of ETGs are one of the prime goals of the project. We provide specific examples of each type of observed structures - tidal tails, stellar streams and shells - and explain how they were identified and classified. We give an overview of the initial results. The detailed statistical analysis will be presented in future papers.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
The SAURON project - III. Integral-field absorption-line kinematics of 48 elliptical and lenticular galaxies
We present the stellar kinematics of 48 representative elliptical and
lenticular galaxies obtained with our custom-built integral-field spectrograph
SAURON operating on the William Herschel Telescope. The data were homogeneously
processed through a dedicated reduction and analysis pipeline. All resulting
SAURON datacubes were spatially binned to a constant minimum signal-to-noise.
We have measured the stellar kinematics with an optimized (penalized
pixel-fitting) routine which fits the spectra in pixel space, via the use of
optimal templates, and prevents the presence of emission lines to affect the
measurements. We have thus generated maps of the mean stellar velocity, the
velocity dispersion, and the Gauss-Hermite moments h3 and h4 of the
line-of-sight velocity distributions. The maps extend to approximately one
effective radius. Many objects display kinematic twists, kinematically
decoupled components, central stellar disks, and other peculiarities, the
nature of which will be discussed in future papers of this series.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with
full resolution images available at
http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/sauron/papers/emsellem2004_sauron3.pd
A Novel Architecture for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting Rapid Civil Alert
The EO-ALERT European Commission H2020 project proposes the definition, development, and verification and
validation through ground hardware testing, of a next-generation Earth Observation (EO) data processing chain. The
proposed data processing chain is based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves EO data processing
elements traditionally executed in the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of delivering EO
products to the end user with very low latency. EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO
products delivery, and below one minute in realistic scenarios.
The proposed EO-ALERT architecture is enabled by on-board processing, recent improvements in processing
hardware using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, and persistent space-to-ground communications
links. EO-ALERT combines innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications,
namely: on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the generation of
alerts (EO products) using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board AI-based compression and encryption, high-speed on-board avionics, and reconfigurable high data rate communication links
to ground, including a separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage.
This paper presents the proposed architecture, its hardware realization for the ground testing in a representative
environment and its performance. The architecture’s performance is evaluated considering two different user
scenarios where very low latency (almost-real-time) EO product delivery is required: ship detection and extreme
weather monitoring/nowcasting. The hardware testing results show that, when implemented using COTS
components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can deliver alerts to the end user with a
latency below five minutes, for both SAR and Optical missions, demonstrating the viability of the EO-ALERT
architecture. In particular, in several test scenarios, for both the TerraSAR-X SAR and DEIMOS-2 Optical Very
High Resolution (VHR) missions, hardware testing of the proposed architecture has shown it can deliver EO
products and alerts to the end user globally, with latency lower than one-point-five minutes