PROCESS-TRELLIS ARCHITECTURE FOR PARALLEL REAL-TIME MONITORS AND DATA FUSION APPLICATIONS

REAL-TIME MONITORS ARE DESIGNED TO FILTER AND ANALYZE PATTERNS IN COLLECTIONS OF INCOMING DATA STREAMS--FOR EXAMPLE, TO CONVERT LOW-LEVEL SIGNAL AND IMAGE DATA INTO HIGH-LEVEL DESCRIPTIONS. IN SHORT, THEY ARE A SOLUTION TO THE "DATA FUSION" PROBLEM. THIS PROJECT IMPLEMENTS THE PROCESS-TRELLIS SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE AS A PROGRAMMING METHODOLOGY AND TOOL FOR BUILDING PARALLEL REAL-TIME MONITORS. THE PROJECT WILL ENABLE DATA FUSION APPLICATIONS TO EXPLOIT NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN PARALLEL COMPUTER HARDWARE AND PROCESSING. THE PROCESS TRELLIS SUPPORTS HIERARCHICAL, MULTIPROCESS DATAFUSION STRUCTURES THAT CONVERT INCOMING RAW DATA INTO HIGH-LEVEL ABSTRACTIONS. INTERMEDIATE PROCESSING IS PERFORMED BY NUMEROUS ANALYSIS PROCEDURES RUNNING ASYNCHRONOUSLY AND IN PARALLEL, INTERACTING ONLY THROUGH THEFLOW OF DATA IN THE TRELLIS. THE TRELLIS WILL BE IMPLEMENTED USING LINDA (R), A COMMERCIAL PRODUCT OF SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING ASSOCIATES, INC., THAT PROVIDES CONVENIENT ACCESS TO PARALLELISM FROM WITHIN HIGH-LEVEL LANGUAGES LIKE C OR FORTRAN.