Abstract: Imaging through Cluttered Media Using Electromagnetic Interferometry on a Hardware-Accelerated High-Performance Cluster

Esam El- Araby, Ozlim Kilic, Vinh Dang
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2477068

Detecting concealed objects such as weapons behind cluttered media is essential for security applications. Terahertz frequencies are usually employed for imaging in security checkpoints due to their safe non-ionizing properties for humans. Interferometric images are constructed based on the complex correlation function of the received electric fields from the medium of interest. Interferometric imaging, however, is computationally intensive which makes it impractical for real time requirements. Therefore, it is essential to have efficient implementations of the algorithm using HPC platforms. In this paper, we exploit the capabilities of a 13-node GPU-accelerated cluster using CUDA and MVAPICH2 environments for electromagnetic terahertz interferometric imaging through cluttered media. With efficient load balancing, the experimental results demonstrate the performance gain achieved in comparison to conventional platforms. The results also show potential scalability characteristics for larger HPC systems.