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At least 1,027 records · Page 57

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1980

The payload connection - Approaches to onboard data processing for scientific systems on the Space Shuttle

The integration of payload instruments into the Command and Data Management Subsystem (CDMS) of the Space Shuttle Spacelab is discussed. Specific emphasis is on the distributed (self-contained processor) vs centralized (Spacelab Computer) approach to science payload utilization of these control and data handling capabilities. An overview of the Spacelab CDMS is first given. A synopsis of the integration process for Spacelab Missions 1, 2, and 3 is discussed. Three different hardware approaches to payload command and data handling are then categorized from which Spacelab implementations to date are derived. The different types of Spacelab Mission 3 payload CDMS hardware and software being used are discussed, including examples of microprocessors and data acquisition systems. Preliminary costs for Spacelab application software vs other flight software approaches are compared. A standard RAU interface that would permit a range of ECOS services to be provided, yet be implemented as a mass-produceable unit for incorporation into payloads, is proposed, in keeping with the trend toward simplifying the integration effort, standardizing CDMS interfaces, and ultimately lowering cost.

Konkel, C. R.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Smart and Intelligent Sensors

John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) provides rocket engine propulsion testing for NASA's space programs. Since the development of the Space Shuttle, every Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) has undergone acceptance testing at SSC before going to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for integration into the Space Shuttle. The SSME is a large cryogenic rocket engine that uses Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) as the fuel. As NASA moves to the new ARES V launch system, the main engines on the new vehicle, as well as the upper stage engine, are currently base lined to be cryogenic rocket engines that will also use LH2. The main rocket engines for the ARES V will be larger than the SSME, while the upper stage engine will be approximately half that size. As a result, significant quantities of hydrogen will be required during the development, testing, and operation of these rocket engines.Better approaches are needed to simplify sensor integration and help reduce life-cycle costs. 1.Smarter sensors. Sensor integration should be a matter of "plug-and-play" making sensors easier to add to a system. Sensors that implement new standards can help address this problem; for example, IEEE STD 1451.4 defines transducer electronic data sheet (TEDS) templates for commonly used sensors such as bridge elements and thermocouples. When a 1451.4 compliant smart sensor is connected to a system that can read the TEDS memory, all information needed to configure the data acquisition system can be uploaded. This reduces the amount of labor required and helps minimize configuration errors. 2.Intelligent sensors. Data received from a sensor be scaled, linearized; and converted to engineering units. Methods to reduce sensor processing overhead at the application node are needed. Smart sensors using low-cost microprocessors with integral data acquisition and communication support offer the means to add these capabilities. Once a processor is embedded, other features can be added; for example, intelligent sensors can make a health assessment to inform the data acquisition client when sensor performance is suspect. 3.Distributed sample synchronization. Networks of sensors require new ways for synchronizing samples. Standards that address the distributed timing problem (for example, IEEE STD 1588) provide the means to aggregate samples from many distributed smart sensors with sub-microsecond accuracy. 4. Reduction in interconnect. Alternative means are needed to reduce the frequent problems associated with cabling and connectors. Wireless technologies offer the promise of reducing interconnects and simultaneously making it easy to quickly add a sensor to a system.

Lansaw, John↗

DOE OSTI2021

Hardware accelerated dynamic work creation on a graphics processing unit

A processor core is configured to execute a parent task that is described by a data structure stored in a memory. A coprocessor is configured to dispatch a child task to the at least one processor core in response to the coprocessor receiving a request from the parent task concurrently with the parent task executing on the at least one processor core. In some cases, the parent task registers the child task in a task pool and the child task is a future task that is configured to monitor a completion object and enqueue another task associated with the future task in response to detecting the completion object. The future task is configured to self-enqueue by adding a continuation future task to a continuation queue for subsequent execution in response to the future task failing to detect the completion object.

Gutierrez, Anthony↗

DOE OSTI2023

Hardware accelerated dynamic work creation on a graphics processing unit

Gutierrez, Anthony T.↗

DOE OSTI2015

Beam Stability R&D for the APS MBA Upgrade

Beam diagnostics required for the APS Multi-bend acromat (MBA) are driven by ambitious beam stability requirements. The major AC stability challenge is to correct rms beam motion to 10% the rms beam size at the insertion device source points from0.01 to 1000 Hz. The vertical plane represents the biggest challenge forAC stability, which is required to be 400 nm rms for a 4-micron vertical beam size. In addition to AC stability, long-term drift over a period of seven days is required to be 1 micron or less. Major diagnostics R&D components include improved rf beam position processing using commercially available FPGA-based BPM processors, new X-ray beam position monitors based on hard X-ray fluorescence from copper and Compton scattering off diamond, mechanical motion sensing to detect and correct long-term vacuum chamber drift, a new feedback system featuring a tenfold increase in sampling rate, and a several-fold increase in the number of fast correctors and BPMs in the feedback algorithm. Feedback system development represents a major effort, and we are pursuing development of a novel algorithm that integrates orbit correction for both slow and fast correctors down to DC simultaneously. Finally, a new data acquisition system (DAQ) is being developed to simultaneously acquire streaming data from all diagnostics as well as the feedback processors for commissioning and fault diagnosis. Results of studies and the design effort are reported.

APS MBA Upgrade↗

NASA NTRS1989

Real time processor for array speckle interferometry

The authors are constructing a real-time processor to acquire image frames, perform array flat-fielding, execute a 64 x 64 element two-dimensional complex FFT (fast Fourier transform) and average the power spectrum, all within the 25 ms coherence time for speckles at near-IR (infrared) wavelength. The processor will be a compact unit controlled by a PC with real-time display and data storage capability. This will provide the ability to optimize observations and obtain results on the telescope rather than waiting several weeks before the data can be analyzed and viewed with offline methods. The image acquisition and processing, design criteria, and processor architecture are described.

Chin, Gordon↗

NASA NTRS2005

Lessons Learned From Developing Three Generations of Remote Sensing Science Data Processing Systems

The Biospheric Information Systems Branch at NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center has developed three generations of Science Investigator-led Processing Systems for use with various remote sensing instruments. The first system is used for data from the MODIS instruments flown on NASA s Earth Observing Systems @OS) Terra and Aqua Spacecraft launched in 1999 and 2002 respectively. The second generation is for the Ozone Measuring Instrument flying on the EOS Aura spacecraft launched in 2004. We are now developing a third generation of the system for evaluation science data processing for the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) to be flown by the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) in 2006. The initial system was based on large scale proprietary hardware, operating and database systems. The current OMI system and the OMPS system being developed are based on commodity hardware, the LINUX Operating System and on PostgreSQL, an Open Source RDBMS. The new system distributes its data archive across multiple server hosts and processes jobs on multiple processor boxes. We have created several instances of this system, including one for operational processing, one for testing and reprocessing and one for applications development and scientific analysis. Prior to receiving the first data from OMI we applied the system to reprocessing information from the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV) and Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instruments flown from 1978 until now. The system was able to process 25 years (108,000 orbits) of data and produce 800,000 files (400 GiB) of level 2 and level 3 products in less than a week. We will describe the lessons we have learned and tradeoffs between system design, hardware, operating systems, operational staffing, user support and operational procedures. During each generational phase, the system has become more generic and reusable. While the system is not currently shrink wrapped we believe it is to the point where it could be readily adopted, with substantial cost savings, for other similar tasks.

Tilmes, Curt↗

NASA NTRS2005

Implementation of a High-Speed FPGA and DSP Based FFT Processor for Improving Strain Demodulation Performance in a Fiber-Optic-Based Sensing System

NASA's Aviation Safety and Security Program is pursuing research in on-board Structural Health Management (SHM) technologies for purposes of reducing or eliminating aircraft accidents due to system and component failures. Under this program, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is developing a strain-based structural health-monitoring concept that incorporates a fiber optic-based measuring system for acquiring strain values. This fiber optic-based measuring system provides for the distribution of thousands of strain sensors embedded in a network of fiber optic cables. The resolution of strain value at each discrete sensor point requires a computationally demanding data reduction software process that, when hosted on a conventional processor, is not suitable for near real-time measurement. This report describes the development and integration of an alternative computing environment using dedicated computing hardware for performing the data reduction. Performance comparison between the existing and the hardware-based system is presented.

Farley, Douglas L.↗

NASA NTRS1988

A parallel Householder tridiagonalization stratagem using scattered square decomposition

The parallel stratagem in this paper uses scattered square decomposition, introduced by Fox (1985), for its data assignment and then exploits parallelism in the solution steps of the sequential Householder tridiagonalization algorithm. One may condense a real symmetric full matrix A of order n into a tridiagonal form by the stratagem in concurrent machines where N(=D-squared) processors are used. Expressions for efficiency and speedup are given for the evaluation of the stratagem. An alternative stratagem which requires less data transmission but more computations is also discussed. The results shown that the Householder method of tridiagonalization may be implemented on a concurrent machine efficiently by scattered square decomposition provided that the number of matrix elements contained in each processor is much larger than the number of processors of the concurrent machine, and the ratio of the time to transmit one data item from one processor to any other processor to the time to perform a floating-point arithmetic operation is small enough.

Chang, H. Y.↗

DOE OSTI2014

Load Balancing Scientific Applications

The largest supercomputers have millions of independent processors, and concurrency levels are rapidly increasing. For ideal efficiency, developers of the simulations that run on these machines must ensure that computational work is evenly balanced among processors. Assigning work evenly is challenging because many large modern parallel codes simulate behavior of physical systems that evolve over time, and their workloads change over time. Furthermore, the cost of imbalanced load increases with scale because most large-scale scientific simulations today use a Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) parallel programming model, and an increasing number of processors will wait for the slowest one at the synchronization points. To address load imbalance, many large-scale parallel applications use dynamic load balance algorithms to redistribute work evenly. The research objective of this dissertation is to develop methods to decide when and how to load balance the application, and to balance it effectively and affordably. We measure and evaluate the computational load of the application, and develop strategies to decide when and how to correct the imbalance. Depending on the simulation, a fast, local load balance algorithm may be suitable, or a more sophisticated and expensive algorithm may be required. We developed a model for comparison of load balance algorithms for a specific state of the simulation that enables the selection of a balancing algorithm that will minimize overall runtime.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS1996

Geocoding of AIRSAR/TOPSAR SAR Data

It has been demonstrated and recognized that radar interferometry is a promising method for the determination of digital elevation information and terrain slope from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. An important application of Interferometric SAR (InSAR) data in areas with topographic variations is that the derived elevation and slope can be directly used for the absolute radiometric calibration of the amplitude SAR data as well as for scattering mechanisms analysis. On the other hand polarimetric SAR data has long been recognized as permitting a more complete inference of natural surfaces than a single channel radar system. In fact, imaging polarimetry provides the measurement of the amplitude and relative phase of all transmit and receive polarizations. On board the NASA DC-8 aircraft, NASA/JPL operates the multifrequency (P, L and C bands) multipolarimetric radar AIRSAR. The TOPSAR, a special mode of the AIRSAR system, is able to collect single-pass interferometric C- and/or L-band VV polarized data. A possible configuration of the AIRSAR/TOPSAR system is to acquire single-pass interferometric data at C-band VV polarization and polarimetric radar data at the two other lower frequencies. The advantage of this system configuration is to get digital topography information at the same time the radar data is collected. The digital elevation information can therefore be used to correctly calibrate the SAR data. This step is directly included in the new AIRSAR Integrated Processor. This processor uses a modification of the full motion compensation algorithm described by Madsen et al. (1993). However, the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with the additional products such as local incidence angle map, and the SAR data are in a geometry which is not convenient, since especially DEMs must be referred to a specific cartographic reference system. Furthermore, geocoding of SAR data is important for multisensor and/or multitemporal purposes. In this paper, a procedure to geocode the new AIRSAR/TOPSAR data is presented. As an example an AIRSAR/TOPSAR image acquired in 1994 is geocoded and evaluated in terms of geometric accuracy.

Holecz, Francesco↗

NASA NTRS1975

Advances in automatic extraction of information from multispectral scanner data

The state-of-the-art of automatic multispectral scanner data analysis and interpretation is reviewed. Sources of system variability which tend to obscure the spectral characteristics of the classes under consideration are discussed, and examples of the application of spatial and temporal discrimination bases are given. Automatic processing functions, techniques and methods, and equipment are described with particular attention to those that are applicable to large land surveys using satellite data. The development and characteristics of the Multivariate Interactive Digital Analysis System (MIDAS) for processing aircraft or satellite multispectral scanning data are discussed in detail. The MIDAS system combines the parallel digital implementation capabilities of a low-cost processor with a general purpose PDP-11/45 minicomputer to provide near-real-time data processing. The preprocessing functions are user-selectable. The input subsystem accepts data stored on high density digital tape, computer compatible tape, and analog tape.

Erickson, J. D.↗

DOE OSTI2024

Secure hierarchical processing using a secure ledger

Disclosed is a system and method for processing data using blockchain technology. The system includes a memory having programmable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a processor, cause the system to: authenticate one or more sensors in anticipation of receiving component data; receive component data, upon successful authentication; store the component data locally or to a cloud-based server and/or calculate a root value for the component data; store or embed the root value with the stored component data; condense the component data and link the condensed component data to the stored component data via the root value. The system further includes instructions to log the condensed data, including the root value, to a ledger, and to identify a tag or transaction id corresponding to the logging event for subsequent retrieval of the condensed data using the tag or transaction id.

Zhao, Wenbing↗

NASA NTRS1992

Alaska SAR processor implementation of E-ERS-1

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data processing algorithm used by the Alaska SAR Facility (ASF) for the European Space Agency's first Remote-Sensing Satellite (E-ERS-1) SAR data are examined. Preprocessing highlights two features: signal measurement, which includes signal-to-noise ratio, replica measurement, and noise measurement; and Doppler measurement, which includes clutter lock and autofocus. The custom pipeline architecture performs the main processing with controls at the input interface, range correlator, corner-turn memory, azimuth correlator, and multi-look memory. The control software employs a flexible control scheme. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) format encapsulates the ASF products. System performance for SAR image processing of E-ERS-1 data is reviewed.

Cuddy, David↗

NASA NTRS1989

Data traffic reduction schemes for Cholesky factorization on asynchronous multiprocessor systems

Communication requirements of Cholesky factorization of dense and sparse symmetric, positive definite matrices are analyzed. The communication requirement is characterized by the data traffic generated on multiprocessor systems with local and shared memory. Lower bound proofs are given to show that when the load is uniformly distributed the data traffic associated with factoring an n x n dense matrix using n to the alpha power (alpha less than or equal 2) processors is omega(n to the 2 + alpha/2 power). For n x n sparse matrices representing a square root of n x square root of n regular grid graph the data traffic is shown to be omega(n to the 1 + alpha/2 power), alpha less than or equal 1. Partitioning schemes that are variations of block assignment scheme are described and it is shown that the data traffic generated by these schemes are asymptotically optimal. The schemes allow efficient use of up to O(n to the 2nd power) processors in the dense case and up to O(n) processors in the sparse case before the total data traffic reaches the maximum value of O(n to the 3rd power) and O(n to the 3/2 power), respectively. It is shown that the block based partitioning schemes allow a better utilization of the data accessed from shared memory and thus reduce the data traffic than those based on column-wise wrap around assignment schemes.

Naik, Vijay K.↗

NASA NTRS1994

An implementation of a tree code on a SIMD, parallel computer

We describe a fast tree algorithm for gravitational N-body simulation on SIMD parallel computers. The tree construction uses fast, parallel sorts. The sorted lists are recursively divided along their x, y and z coordinates. This data structure is a completely balanced tree (i.e., each particle is paired with exactly one other particle) and maintains good spatial locality. An implementation of this tree-building algorithm on a 16k processor Maspar MP-1 performs well and constitutes only a small fraction (approximately 15%) of the entire cycle of finding the accelerations. Each node in the tree is treated as a monopole. The tree search and the summation of accelerations also perform well. During the tree search, node data that is needed from another processor is simply fetched. Roughly 55% of the tree search time is spent in communications between processors. We apply the code to two problems of astrophysical interest. The first is a simulation of the close passage of two gravitationally, interacting, disk galaxies using 65,636 particles. We also simulate the formation of structure in an expanding, model universe using 1,048,576 particles. Our code attains speeds comparable to one head of a Cray Y-MP, so single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) type computers can be used for these simulations. The cost/performance ratio for SIMD machines like the Maspar MP-1 make them an extremely attractive alternative to either vector processors or large multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) type parallel computers. With further optimizations (e.g., more careful load balancing), speeds in excess of today's vector processing computers should be possible.

Olson, Kevin M.↗

NASA NTRS1982

An empirical determination of the effects of sea state bias on Seasat altimetry

A linear empirical model has been developed for the correction of sea state bias effects, in Seasat altimetry data altitude measurements, that are due to (1) electromagnetic bias caused by the fact that ocean wave troughs reflect the altimeter signal more strongly than the crests, shifting the apparent mean sea level toward the wave troughs, and (2) an independent instrument-related bias resulting from the inability of height corrections applied in the ground processor to compensate for simplifying assumptions made for the processor aboard Seasat. After applying appropriate corrections to the altimetry data, an empirical model for the sea state bias is obtained by differencing significant wave height and height measurements from coincident ground tracks. Height differences are minimized by solving for the coefficient of a linear relationship between height differences and wave height differences that minimize the height differences. In more than 50% of the 36 cases examined, 7% of the value of significant wave height should be subtracted for sea state bias correction.

Born, G. H.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Cyclops - The JPL AIRSAR synoptic processor

Capability for synoptic, or wide-area, SAR processing has been added to the JPL Aircraft Synthetic Aperture Radar System (AIRSAR) by means of the CYCLOPS synoptic processor. Polarimetric requirements have been relaxed so that a single node in the system can process SAR data with a throughput of three channels in 3.75 hours. Each channel consists of five minutes of full-range-swath data chosen from the twelve available AIRSAR polarization channels. Processed data consists of 16-look, 16-meter resolution imagery with a swath size of 60 km. The processor fully utilizes the available Doppler bandwidth and provides processing options for range migration correction, zero-Doppler deskew, frequency registration, and radiometric correction. The detected-power output product is scaled so as to provide sigma zero radiometric calibration.

Taylor, Victor B.↗