Development of pattern recognition algorithms for particles detection from atmospheric images

The HESS experiment consists of a system of telescopes destined to observe cosmic rays. Since the project has achieved a high level of performances, a second phase of the project has been initiated. This implies the addition of a new telescope which is more sensitive than its predecessors and which is capable of collecting a huge amount of images. In this context, all data collected by the telescope can not be retained because of storage limitations. Therefore, a new real-time system trigger must be designed in order to select interesting events on the fly. The purpose of this thesis was to propose a trigger solution to efficiently discriminate events (images) which are captured by the telescope. The first part of this thesis was to develop pattern recognition algorithms to be implemented within the trigger. A processing chain based on neural networks and Zernike moments has been validated. The second part of the thesis has focused on the implementation of the proposed algorithms onto an FPGA target, taking into account the application constraints in terms of resources and execution time. (author)