Two efficient, new techniques for detecting dispersed radio pulses with interferometers: The Chirpolator and The Chimageator

TL;DR

This paper introduces two novel antenna-coherent techniques, The Chirpolator and The Chimageator, for detecting dispersed radio pulses in interferometric data, offering computational efficiency especially for sparse arrays and future supercomputing architectures.

Contribution

The paper presents two new methods, The Chirpolator and The Chimageator, with optimized equations and implementation strategies that outperform classical methods in specific regimes.

Findings

Lower data rates in sparse array regimes

Reduced post-integrator operations rate with The Chirpolator

Better compatibility with future supercomputers

Abstract

Searching for dispersed radio pulses in interferometric data is of great scientific interest, but poses a formidable computational burden. Here we present two efficient, new antenna-coherent solutions: The Chirpolator and The Chimageator. We describe the equations governing both techniques and propose a number of novel optimizations. We compare the implementation costs of our techniques with classical methods using three criteria: the operations rates (1) before and (2) after the integrate-and-dump stage, and (3) the data rate directly after the integrate-and-dump stage. When compared with classical methods, our techniques excel in the regime of sparse arrays, where they both require substantially lower data rates, and The Chirpolator requires a much lower post-integrator operations rate. In general, our techniques require more pre-integrator operations than the classical ones. We argue that the data and operations rates required by our techniques are better matched to future supercomputer architectures, where the arithmetic capability is outstripping the bandwidth capability. Our techniques are, therefore, viable candidates for deploying on future interferometers such as the Square Kilometer Array.