THE APPLICATION OF PARALLEL PROCESSING TO COORDINATE ASW OPERATIONS

THE PROBLEM AREA WE PROPOSE TO INVESTIGATE IS THE APPLICATION OF PARALLEL PROCESSING ALGORITHMS AND TECHNOLOGY TO COORDINATE ANTISUBMARINE WARFARE (ASW) OPERATIONS. OUR TECHNICAL OBJECTIVES ARE TWO-FOLD: 1) TO CONSIDER A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF DISCRETE NONLINEAR FILTERING, ANALYZE THE PARALLELISM IN THE DISCRETE FILTERING ALGORITHM, AND DEVELOP NEW ALGORITHMS FOR PARALLEL PROCESSORS COUPLED WITH A THEORETICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE TYPES OF ARCHITECTURES ON WHICH THE FILTERING ALGORITHM WOULD PERFORM BEST; AND 2) TO IMPLEMENT AND EVALUATE SELECTED ALGORITHMS ON A MOTOROLA 68020-BASED PARALLEL MACHINE IN ORDER TO EXPERIMENTALLY VERIFY THE UTILITY OF THE NEW ALGORITHMS. THE DISCRETE FILTERING ALGORITHM WE PROPOSE TO ANALYZE IS A NON-LINEAR TRACKER PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED BY METRON. WE WILL SHOW THAT THE DISCRETE FILTERING ALGORITHM IS MASSIVELY PARALLEL, AND THAT MOST OF THE OPERATIONS COULD BE CARRIED OUT BY A SIMD COMPUTER USING A RECTANGULAR ARRAY OF PROCESSORS. HOWEVER, SEVERAL STEPS IN THE ALGORITHM REQUIRE NON-TRIVAL INTERPROCESSOR COMMUNICATION, SO THE OPTIMAL PROCESSOR INTERCONNECTION SCHEME IS NOT OBVIOUS.