A real-time KLT implementation for radio-SETI applications

Melis A.;Concu R.;Pari P.;Maccone C.;Montebugnoli S.;Possenti A.;Valente G.;Antonietti N.;Perrodin D.;Migoni C.;Murgia M.;Trois A.;Barbaro M.;Bocchinu A.;Casu S.;Lunesu M. I.;Monari J.;Navarrini A.;Pisanu T.;Schilliro F.;Vacca V.

2016-01-01

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Abstract

SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, is the search for radio signals emitted by alien civilizations living in the Galaxy. Narrow-band FFT-based approaches have been preferred in SETI, since their computation time only grows like N∗lnN, where N is the number of time samples. On the contrary, a wide-band approach based on the Kahrunen-Lo'eve Transform (KLT) algorithm would be preferable, but it would scale like N∗N. In this paper, we describe a hardware-software infrastructure based on FPGA boards and GPU-based PCs that circumvents this computation-time problem allowing for a real-time KLT.