Towards a Realtime FRB pipeline at the northern cross radio telescope

Abstract

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are among the most intriguing astrophysical phenomena, requiring high-throughput, low-latency detection systems to capture their fleeting signatures. This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-time FRB detection pipeline tailored for the Northern Cross Radio Telescope, which is undergoing a major digital upgrade. Leveraging GPU-accelerated beamforming and transient search algorithms, the system integrates a scalable software architecture capable of processing wide-field data streams in the 400–416 MHz band. We describe the pipeline’s modular components, including the data reception, the GPU-based beamforming and correlation, and a proposed orchestration framework for transmitting the synthesised beams to remote memory for downstream scientific applications. Preliminary benchmarks demonstrate significant performance over the acquisition times, enabling real-time processing across multiple synthesised beams.