Real-time sonar beamforming on a Unix workstation using process networks and POSIX threads

Author

Allen, Gregory E. ; Evans, Brian L. ; Schanbacher, David C.

Author_Institution

Appl. Res. Lab., Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA

Volume

2

fYear

1998

fDate

1-4 Nov. 1998

Firstpage

1725

Abstract

Traditionally, expensive custom hardware has been required to implement data-intensive sonar beamforming algorithms in real-time. We develop a sonar beamformer in software by merging the following technologies: (1) symmetric multiprocessing on Unix workstations, (2) lightweight POSIX threads, and (3) the process network model of computation. We find that it is feasible for a 4-GFLOP digital interpolation process network beamformer to run in real-time on a Sun workstation with 16 UltraSPARC-II processors running at 336 MHz. The workstation beamformer significantly reduces cost and development time over an equivalent hardware beamformer.

Keywords

Unix; array signal processing; direction-of-arrival estimation; interpolation; real-time systems; sonar arrays; sonar signal processing; workstations; 336 MHz; 4 GFLOPS; POSIX threads; Sun workstation; UltraSPARC-II processors; Unix workstation; cost reduction; custom hardware; data-intensive sonar beamforming algorithms; development time reduction; digital interpolation process network beamformer; process network; real-time sonar beamforming; symmetric multiprocessing; workstation beamformer; Array signal processing; Computational modeling; Computer networks; Hardware; Interpolation; Merging; Sonar; Sun; Workstations; Yarn;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Signals, Systems & Computers, 1998. Conference Record of the Thirty-Second Asilomar Conference on

Conference_Location

Pacific Grove, CA, USA

ISSN

1058-6393

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5148-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ACSSC.1998.751620

Filename

751620