THE PROBLEM
Some of the world’s most demanding scientific computer users are the remote-sensing and imaging specialists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a federally funded research and development center in Pasadena, California. Whether collecting thousands of images from advanced satellites or studying worldwide atmospheric condition or just keeping the satellites operational, these researchers place tremendous demands on their support groups.

It’s no wonder Dr. Ed Baroth and his team at JPL’s Measurement Technology Center (MTC) are very busy people. MTC’s mission is to provide engineering practices, tools and training necessary to make direct test measurements that meet the requirements of JPL's various federally and privately funded projects. At MTC, Dr. Baroth and his team evaluate, recommend, configure and support data acquisition systems for JPL researchers. Explains Dr. Baroth, "Basically, we provide complete, turnkey solutions to the various data acquisition needs of the JPL community."

THE SOLUTION
PV-WAVE, the visual data analysis software developed by Visual Numerics, has become an integral element of MTC’s UNIX ®-based solutions mix. "We are often asked to deliver systems in a very short turnaround time to users with very different levels of expertise. Products that we use for our systems and recommend to our users must be dependable, usable by different types of researchers on different computers and flexible enough to configure and customize easily so they meet the unique demands of our researchers."

PV-WAVE is very useful in indirect data acquisition, that is, when the data have been collected and some additional post-processing is required. Reports Dr. Baroth, "Once the data are collected, casual computer users can use PV-WAVE to quickly visualize and analyze their large, multidimensional data sets, then easily create output to share with colleagues."

The researchers use imaging processing and two- and three-dimensional graphics to visualize their data. The availability of important analysis functions — fast Fourier transforms, signal-processing filters, basic statistics, etc. — within PV-WAVE is especially helpful. Dr. Baroth says, "PV-WAVE is a solution to these needs because it has excellent visualization and analysis tools built into one product, so we don’t have to supply separate products or do the costly integration ourselves."

Many JPL researchers work with satellite image and telemetry data, and the sheer amount of data can be overwhelming. Satellites like Magellan or Galileo often transmit hundreds of data samples each second, recording from perhaps 60 channels at once. Users need analysis and visualization tools that can handle these large data sets. With PV-WAVE, researchers can easily read in very large data sets and do their visualization and analysis.

There is no shortage of interesting research for MTC to support. In one application, satellites called atmospheric sounders are used to measure specific parameters in the atmosphere. The data help researchers create ozone profiles to study the complex dynamics of the earth’s ozone layer. For example, they may look at changes in ozone over time or by latitude and longitude or look at a time series of ten to 12 years of ozone data at several levels in the atmosphere. Another researcher studies changes in ocean temperature over time, comparing such factors as cloud cover and surface temperature. This study compares several parameters affecting ocean temperature, for example, cloud cover versus surface temperature by ranges versus surface latitude and longitude. PV-WAVE has become an important tool for these researchers.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Using PV-WAVE and other products provided by MTC, JPL researchers are making important discoveries that contribute to the health and well being of society and the earth as a whole.

WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND SUPPORT
Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for over 30 years. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today’s business analytical needs.