Towards a GPU-Accelerated Real-Time Imaging Pipeline for SETI at the Allen Telescope Array

Abstract

Traditional technosignature and transient searches commonly operate on beamformed time--frequency products. Interferometric imaging adds spatial context and allows time-domain searches to be performed across many image pixels simultaneously. We report the development and testing of a GPU-accelerated interferometric imaging and image-domain dispersion-measure (DM) search pipeline for Allen Telescope Array (ATA) post-correlation UVH5 visibility data, integrated with the CyberEther streaming framework to replay recorded visibility data and work toward real-time operation. The pipeline forms Stokes-I dirty images from correlated visibilities, incorporates Inter-Quartile Range Mitigation (IQRM) flags into the imaging weights, images 48 frequency subbands spanning 287.5\,MHz, subtracts a temporal mean over the full observation from each subband and pixel, applies IQRM-informed subband masking, and performs a blind trial-DM search using a short-history image ring buffer. On a controlled 10-minute three-spectral-window test observation containing a periodic dispersed pulsed injection (DM\,$\approx$\,150\,pc\,cm$^{-3}$), the pipeline recovers the injected source at the phase centre with a best-fit DM\,$=$\,150\,pc\,cm$^{-3}$, with individual dispersed pulses reaching a median image-plane S/N of $\approx$52. When integrated into CyberEther, the core processing requires approximately 63\,ms per integration compared with a native integration time of approximately 98\,ms, demonstrating that the core science-processing operations can be completed within the available integration time. The present implementation operates on recorded visibility data and relies on a temporal mean and MAD noise estimate precomputed over the full observation. For live operation, these quantities will instead need to be estimated from data available up to the current integration.