Spiking Neural Dedispersion: A Neuromorphic Fast Radio Burst Detection Pipeline

Abstract: Real-time FRB detection at next-generation radio telescopes is increasingly dominated in cost and footprint by the real-time dedispersion backend. We present a complete neuromorphic FRB detection pipeline built on the Spiking Neural Dedispersion (SND) algorithm, a hierarchical delay-and-add tree that performs incoherent dedispersion on spike-encoded filterbank data, supporting arbitrary trial-DM grids and configurable branching factors. Three operating modes are evaluated, spanning a resource-sensitivity trade-off from binary thresholded accumulation to full float32 precision. Validated against Heimdall on synthetic Northern Cross filterbanks, float SND matches Heimdall at 99.3% detection completeness (244 mW per beam), graded mode achieves 89.3% at 61 mW, and binary mode reaches 59.4% overall (1.75 mW), retaining 91% sensitivity for bright, narrow events. The full pipeline fits on a single SpiNNaker 2 chip across all three modes; binary mode fits entirely within on-chip SRAM, while graded and float require external DRAM for the history buffer. On a deployed 48-chip system, total power projects to approximately 100-112 W, a reduction of order 10-40x over an equivalent GPU deployment, with 48 simultaneous beams per board.