Dans le cadre de la préparation du Square Kilometre Array (SKA), le plus large radio interféromètre au monde, de nouveaux défis de traitement d'images sont à relever. En effet, les données fournies par SKA auront un débit énorme, nécessitant ainsi un traitement en temps réel. En outre, grâce à sa résolution et sa sensibilité sans précédent, les observations seront dotées d'une très forte dynamique sur des champs de vue très grands. De nouvelles méthodes de traitement d'images robustes, efficaces et automatisées sont alors exigées. L'objectif de la thèse consiste à développer une nouvelle méthode permettant la restauration du modèle de l'image du ciel à partir des observations. La méthode est conçue pour l'estimation des images de très forte dynamique avec une attention particulière à restaurer les émissions étendues et faibles en intensité, souvent noyées dans les lobes secondaires de la PSF et le bruit. L'approche proposée est basée sur les représentations parcimonieuses, nommée MORESANE. L'image du ciel est modélisée comme étant la superposition de sources, qui constitueront les atomes d'un dictionnaire de synthèse inconnu, ce dernier sera estimé par des a priori d'analyses. Les résultats obtenus sur des simulations réalistes montrent que MORESANE est plus performant que les outils standards et très compétitifs avec les méthodes récemment proposées dans la littérature. MORESANE est appliqué sur des simulations d'observations d'amas de galaxies avec SKA1 afin d'investiguer la détectabilité du milieu non thermique intra-amas. Nos résultats indiquent que cette émission, avec SKA, sera étudiée jusqu'à l'époque de la formation des amas de galaxies massifs. / Within the framework of the preparation for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), that is the world largest radio telescope, new imaging challenges has to be conquered. The data acquired by SKA will have to be processed on real time because of their huge rate. In addition, thanks to its unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, SKA images will have very high dynamic range over wide fields of view. Hence, there is an urgent need for the design of new imaging techniques that are robust and efficient and fully automated. The goal of this thesis is to develop a new technique aiming to reconstruct a model image of the radio sky from the radio observations. The method have been designed to estimate images with high dynamic range with a particular attention to recover faint extended emission usually completely buried in the PSF sidelobes of the brighter sources and the noise. We propose a new approach, based on sparse representations, called MORESANE. The radio sky is assumed to be a summation of sources, considered as atoms of an unknown synthesis dictionary. These atoms are learned using analysis priors from the observed image. Results obtained on realistic simulations show that MORESANE is very promising in the restoration of radio images; it is outperforming the standard tools and very competitive with the newly proposed methods in the literature. MORESANE is also applied on simulations of observations using the SKA1 with the aim to investigate the detectability of the intracluster non thermal component. Our results indicate that these diffuse sources, characterized by very low surface brightness will be investigated up to the epoch of massive cluster formation with the SKA.

It has become clear in recent years that the study of interacting/merging galaxies plays an important role in understanding important astrophysical phenomena. This thesis presents an observational study of interacting/merging galaxies at radio frequencies. The observations have been carried out at extremely high resolution using very long baseline interferometry. The observations described here include: (1) A study of the high velocity Hi absorption associated with the peculiar galaxy NGC 1275; (2) A study of the radio continuum and Hi absorption of the ULIRG IRAS 172080014; (3) A study of the radio continuum and Hi absorption of the LIRG NGC 7674. Some of the most prominent results of these observations include: Detection of several narrow Hi absorption features in the high velocity system associated with NGC 1275. These Hi absorption lines were observed toward the strong radio nucleus 3C 84. The results indicate the existence of several Hi clouds with velocity differences and widths similar to those seen in Galactic neutral hydrogen absorption and similar to some of the Hi absorption seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The discovery of an extreme nuclear starburst region in the advanced merger system IRAS 172080014. Our results suggest a star formation rate of 84 M yr-1, and a supernova rate of 4 yr-1. Hi absorption is detected in multiple components with optical depths ranging between 0.3 and 2.5, and velocity widths between 58 and 232 km s-1. The detection of complex jet structures in the inner 1 kpc region of the galaxy NGC 7674. At full resolution, several compact sources are observed with brightness temperatures on the order of 107 K. While it is possible that one of these compact structures could host an AGN, they could also be shock-like features formed by the interaction of the jet with compact interstellar clouds in the nuclear region of this galaxy. At least eight Hi absorption lines are detected toward some of the continuum emission regions in NGC 7674. If the widest Hi feature in our observations is rotationally broadened by a central supermassive black hole, the implied dynamical mass is about 107 M.

In this thesis we address fundamental questions about what constitutes and limits an HI disc, probing the distribution of neutral gas in the outer parts of galaxies. We use a subsample of galaxies observed as part of the THINGS survey to investigate the HI extent of spiral galaxy discs. We revisit previous work on the extent of HI discs, showing the limitations set by insufficient linear resolution. We then exploit the high spatial and velocity resolution combined with good sensitivity of THINGS to investigate where the atomic gas discs end and what might shape their edges. We find that the atomic gas surface density across most of the disc is constant at 5 – 10 x 10^20 atoms/cm^2 and drops sharply at large radius. The general shape of the HI distribution is well described by a Sérsic-type function with a slope index, n = 0.14 - 0.22 and characteristic radius ri. We propose a new column density threshold of 5 x 10^19 atoms/cm^2 to define the extent of the gas disc. This limit is well within reach of modern instruments and is at the level where disc gas becomes susceptible to ionisation by an extragalactic radiation field. We argue that at this level the HI column density has decreased to one tenth of that across the inner disc and that by going to yet lower column density the disc is unlikely to grow by more than 10% in radius. The HI column density at which the radial profiles turn over is too high for it to be caused by ionisation by an extragalactic UV field and we postulate that the HI extent is set by how galaxy discs form. Ionisation by extragalactic radiation will only play a rôle at column densities below 5 x 10^19 atoms/cm^2, if any. To study the crucial relation between observed edges and how closely these reproduce the intrinsic distribution of gas through our interferometric measurements, we created an ensemble of models based on four radial density distributions. We conclude that the observed edges in spiral galaxies faithfully reflect their intrinsic shape. Only in very specific cases of highly inclined (>75º) and/or large vertical scaleheight discs do we see strong deviations from the intrinsic surface density of the observed shape of the edges in spiral galaxies. In the case of NGC 3198 we concluded that there is no significant difference in the radial profiles obtained with either constant or exponentially increasing vertical gas distributions, when scaleheights are not higher than 1 kpc at the outskirts of the disc. We infer an upper limit to the scaleheight of NGC 3198 of 2 kpc. To address the distribution of neutral gas at larger scales, we study an HI rich, giant LSB galaxy, NGC 765. We present HI spectral line and radio-continuum VLA data, complemented by optical and Chandra X-ray maps. NGC 765 has the largest HI-to-optical ratio known to date of any spiral galaxy and one of the largest known HI discs in absolute size with a diameter of ~ 240 kpc measured at a surface density of 2 x 10^19 atoms/cm^2. We derive a total HI mass of M_HI = 4.7 x 10^10 M_sun, a dynamical mass of M_dyn = 5.1 x 10^11 M_sun and an HI mass to luminosity ratio of M_HI/L_B = 1.6, making it the nearest and largest “crouching giant”. Optical images reveal evidence of a central bar with tightly wound low-surface brightness spiral arms extending from it. Radio-continuum (L_1.4 GHz = 1.3 x 10^21 W/Hz) and X-ray (L_x ~ 1.7 x 10^40 erg/s) emission is found to coincide with the optical core of the galaxy, compatible with nuclear activity powered by a low-luminosity AGN. We may be dealing with a galaxy that has retained in its current morphology traces of its formation history. In fact, it may still be undergoing some accretion, as evidenced by the presence of HI clumps the size (< 10 kpc) and mass (10^8 -10^9 M_sun) of small (dIrr) galaxies in the outskirts of its HI disc and by the presence of two similarly sized companions. In an exploration of future work, we engaged in a study of the edges in the HI discs of dwarf irregular galaxies, their parameterisation and simulation. A collection of simulations were created based on the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366, similar to what was done for the larger spiral galaxies, showing that line-of-sight column densities are affected for discs with inclinations higher than 60º. Five out of eleven of the dwarfs from THINGS which are less inclined than 60º were analysed and parameterised with our Sérsic-type function. Their discs have average central column densities spread evenly from log_10 NHI = 20.7 atoms/cm^2 to log_10 NHI =21.3 atoms/cm^2. Their radial decline is shallower (slope index peaks around n ~ 0.3) than for spirals. The up-coming Local Irregular That Trace Local Extremes (LITTLE) THINGS project, will likely enlarge the number of local dwarf irregular (dIm) galaxies to which this type of analysis can be applied and for which these preliminary results verified.

New millimeter wave interferometric, multifunctional sensors have been studied for industrial sensing applications: displacement measurement, liquid-level gauging and velocimetry. Two types of configuration were investigated to implement the sensor: homodyne and double-channel homodyne. Both sensors were integrated on planar structure using MMIC (Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuit) and MIC (Microwave Integrated Circuit) technology for light, compact, and low-cost design. The displacement measurement results employing homodyne configuration show that sub-millimeter resolution in the order of 0.05 mm is feasible without correcting the non-linear phase response of the quadrature mixer. The double-channel homodyne configuration is proposed to suppress the nonlinearity of the quadrature mixer and to estimate the effect of frequency stability of a microwave signal source without the help of additional test equipment, at the loss of a slight increase of circuit complexity. The digital quadrature mixer is constituted by a quadrature-sampling signal processing technique and takes an important role in the elimination of conventional quadrature mixer's nonlinear phase response. Also, in the same displacement measurement, the radar sensor with the double-channel homodyne configuration provided a better resolution of 0.01mm, the best-reported resolution to date in terms of wavelength in the millimeter wave range, than the sensor employing simple homodyne configuration. Short-term stability of a microwave signal source, which is an important issue in phase sensitive measurement, is also considered through phase noise spectrum obtained by FFT spectral estimator at Intermediate Frequency (IF). The developed sensors demonstrate that displacement sensing with micron resolution and accuracy and high-resolution low-velocity measurement are feasible using millimeter-wave interferometer, which is attractive not only for displacement and velocity measurement, but also for other industrial sensing applications requiring very fine resolution and accuracy.

Certains aspects de l'extraction du signal cosmologique à 21 cm à partir des observations radio, ainsi que le traitement des données interférométriques pour des observations depuis le sol et depuis l'espace ont été étudiés et sont présentés dans cette thèse. J'ai développé un modèle cohérent et à haute résolution du ciel en radio, qui peut fournir une carte complète et précise du ciel, dans la gamme de fréquence 10 MHz à 2,3 GHz, avec une résolution pouvant atteindre une minute d'arc. Le modèle inclut plusieurs sources de rayonnement diffus, en particulier le synchrotron Galactique, les sources radio brillantes du ciel, ainsi qu'un modèle des sources faibles. J'ai également mis au point une méthode pour extraire le signal 21 cm cosmologique, fortement contaminé par les émissions d'avant-plan et le bruit des récepteurs. La méthode utilise une cascade de deux filtres de Wiener, dans l'espace des fréquences d'abord, et ensuite, dans le domaine angulaire. Le premier filtre exploite les variations lentes des émissions d'avant-plan selon la fréquence, tandis que le second filtre exploite les corrélations angulaires du signal cosmologique pour filtrer le bruit des récepteurs, considéré non corrélé entre deux directions différentes. J'ai développé un nouvel algorithme d'imagerie pour les interféromètres en orbite lunaire. Un tel instrument serait idéal pour cartographier le ciel en dessous de 30 MHz; il ne serait en effet pas soumis aux perturbations ionosphériques et serait protégé des interférences électromagnétiques dues aux émissions terrestres. J'ai montré que l'utilisation de la précession du plan orbital du satellite permet de résoudre le problème de la symétrie miroir. La méthode exploite la relation de projection linéaire entre la carte du ciel et les visibilités mesurées, tant dans l'espace angulaire que dans l'espace des harmoniques sphériques pour reconstruire la carte du ciel. L'algorithme d'imagerie gère la complication due à l'ombre de la Lune se déplaçant avec le temps sur le champ de vue des antennes couvrant tout le ciel. Notons que ces effets ne sont pas pris en charge par les algorithmes d'imagerie existants tels que la W-Projection et la WStacking. Enfin, j'ai effectué une première analyse des données de l'interféromètre de transit PAON-4. J'ai évalué la performance globale du réseau en termes de température de bruit et de la réponse des antennes. J'ai pu étalonner avec succès les visibilités, en déterminant à la fois l'amplitude et la phase des termes de gain complexes, tout en corrigeant les décalages de pointage des antennes de PAON4. J'ai ensuite reconstruit la carte du ciel pour une bande de 10 degrés autour de la déclinaison de la source brillante Cygnus A, à partir du flot de données PAON-4 calibré et nettoyé, en appliquant l'algorithme de décomposition en mode m dans l'espace des harmoniques sphériques. / Some aspects of extracting cosmological 21cm signal from radio observations, as well as processing of interferometric data for ground based or space born instruments have been studied and discussed in this dissertation. I have developed a high-resolution self-consistent radio whole sky model, which provides an accurate full sky maps in the frequency range from 10 MHz to 2.3 GHz, with angular resolution up to 1 arcmin. It includes bright and faint radio sources, Galactic synchrotron and Galactic freefree emissions. I have also developed a method to extract the faint cosmological 21-cm signal, heavily contaminated by foreground emissions and receiver noise. The method uses a cascade of two Wiener filters, in frequency domain and then, in angular domain. The first filter exploits the smoothness of the foreground emissions along the frequency, while the second filter exploits the angular correlations of the cosmological signal, due to the receiver noise is considered to be nearly uncorrelated between different directions. I have developed a studied the performance of a new imaging algorithm for lunar orbit interferometers. Such an instrument would be ideal for mapping the radio sky below 30 MHz, as it would be free from ionospheric perturbations, as well as electromagnetic interferences due to terrestrial emissions. I have shown that we make use of the precession of satellite orbital plane to solve the mirror symmetry problem, and exploit the linear mapping between the sky map and the measured visibilities, both in angular space and spherical harmonic space to reconstruct the sky map. The imaging algorithm handles the time-varying Moon's blockage over the whole sky field of view, which are not handled by existing imaging algorithms such as the WProjection and the W-Stacking. Finally, I have carried out a first analysis of the observational visibility data from the PAON-4 transit interferometer. I have evaluated the overall performance of the array in terms of system temperature and antenna response, and successfully calibrated the visibilities, determining both amplitude and phase of the complex gain terms, while correcting PAON-4 antennae pointing offsets. I have then reconstructed the sky map for a 10 degree strip around Cygnus A declination, from the cleaned calibrated PAON-4 data streams, applying the m-mode decomposition map-making algorithm in spherical harmonic space.

This thesis describes the analysis of pointed thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect data from observations using the Cosmic Background Imager 2 (CBI2). CBI2 is an upgrade to the original Cosmic Background Imager, with antennas that have twice the effective collecting area, and hence provide greater sensitivity on longer baselines. Observations of the thermal SZ effect constrain the line-of-sight integrated gas pressure within clusters of galaxies and, when combined with X-ray data, provide an excellent tool for deriving the physical properties of these large structures. The CBI2 SZ data combine relatively low-resolution with a large field-of-view, and can therefore be used to constrain the gas properties of medium-redshift clusters out to the virial radius. By jointly fitting a suitable analytical model to SZ data and X-ray surface brightness data, it is possible to obtain constraints on the temperature and total mass of the cluster. For the analysis work presented in this thesis I choose to parametrise the gas based upon the known behaviour of the entropy, and the total mass by the Navarro, Frenk and White (NFW) prescription. This model is tested against Hydrodynamic/N-body simulations and is found to reproduce the radial behaviour of key cluster properties. The CBI2 observations presented in this work focus on the REFLEX-DXL clusters, an X-ray luminous sub-sample of the REFLEX survey at z ~ 0.3, which have previously published X-ray surface brightness data. The Bullet Cluster, a significant merger system, is a member of this sample and is presented here as a case study for use of the entropy-based model. The derived total mass and gas mass fraction of this cluster are found to be consistent with results from previous X-ray observations. The derived properties from the REFLEX-DXL sample are used to construct a preliminary set of SZ scaling relations out to the virial radius, and are found to be consistent with the self-similar model for massive clusters.

Mergers are known to be essential in the formation of large scale structures and to have a significant role in the history of galaxy formation and evolution. Besides a morphological transformation, mergers induce important bursts of star formation. These starburst are characterised by high Star Formation Efficiencies (SFEs) and Specific Star Formation Rates, i.e., high Star Formation Rates (SFR) per unit of gas mass and high SFR per unit of stellar mass, respectively, compared to spiral galaxies. At all redshifts, starburst galaxies are outliers of the sequence of star-forming galaxies defined by spiral galaxies. We have investigated the origin of the starburst-mode of star formation, in three local interacting systems: Arp 245, Arp 105 and NGC7252. We combined high-resolution JVLA observations of the 21-cm line, tracing the Hi diffuse gas, with UV GALEX observations, tracing the young star-forming regions. We probe the local physical conditions of the Inter- Stellar Medium (ISM) for independent star-forming regions and explore the atomic-to-dense gas transformation in different environments. The SFR/H i ratio is found to be much higher in central regions, compared to outer regions, showing a higher dense gas fraction (or lower Hi gas fraction) in these regions. In the outer regions of the systems, i.e., the tidal tails, where the gas phase is mostly atomic, we find SFR/H i ratios higher than in standard Hi-dominated environments, i.e., outer discs of spiral galaxies and dwarf galaxies. Thus, our analysis reveals that the outer regions of mergers are characterised by high SFEs, compared to the standard mode of star formation. The observation of high dense gas fractions in interacting systems is consistent with the predictions of numerical simulations; it results from the increase of the gas turbulence during a merger. The merger is likely to affect the star-forming properties of the system at all spatial scales, from large scales, with a globally enhanced turbulence, to small scales, with possible modifications of the initial mass function. From a high-resolution numerical simulation of the major merger of two spiral galaxies, we analyse the effects of the galaxy interaction on the star forming properties of the ISM at the scale of star clusters. The increase of the gas turbulence is likely able to explain the formation of Super Star Clusters in the system. Our investigation of the SFR–H i relation in galaxy mergers will be complemented by highresolution Hi data for additional systems, and pushed to yet smaller spatial scales.

La nouvelle génération d’instrument d’interféromètre radio, tels que LOFAR et SKA, nous permettra de construire des images radio à haute résolution angulaire et avec une bonne sensibilité. L’un des problèmes majeurs de l’imagerie interférométrie est qu’il s’agit d’un problème inverse mal posé car seulement quelques coefficients de Fourier (visibilités) peuvent être mesurés par un interféromètre radio. La théorie de l’Acquisition Comprimée (Compressed Sensing) nous permet d’envisager ce problème sous un autre angle et son efficacité pour la radioastronomie a été montrée. Cette thèse se concentre sur la méthodologie de la reconstruction de données à l’Acquisition Comprimée Multicanaux et son application en radioastronomie. Par exemple, les transitoires radios sont un domaine de recherche actif en radioastronomie, mais leur détection est un problème difficile en raison de la faible résolution angulaire et des observations à faible rapport signal-sur-bruit. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous avons exploité la parcimonie de l’information temporelle des transitoires radios et nous avons proposé une méthode de reconstruction spatio-temporelle pour détecter efficacement les sources radios. Les expériences ont démontré la force de cette méthode de reconstruction en comparaison avec les méthodes de l’état de l’art. Une deuxième application concerne l’imagerie interférométrie radio à multi-longueur d’onde dans lesquelles les données sont dégradées différemment en termes de longueur d’onde car la réponse instrumentale varie en fonction de la longueur d’onde. Basé sur le modèle de mélange de sources, un nouveau modèle est proposé pour effectuer de manière jointe une Séparation de Sources en Aveugle et une déconvolution (SSAD). Le problème SSAD n’est pas seulement non-convexe mais aussi mal conditionné en raison des noyaux de convolution. Notre méthode proposée DecGMCA, qui utilise un a priori de parcimonie et emploie un scénario de moindre carré alternatif, est un algorithme efficace pour aborder simultanément les problèmes de déconvolution et de SSA. Les expériences ont démontré que notre approche jointe permet d’obtenir de meilleurs résultats comparée à une analyse standard consistant en une application séquentielle d’une déconvolution suivie d’une séparation de sources en aveugle. / The new generation of radio interferometer instruments, such as LOFAR and SKA, will allow us to build radio images with very high angular resolution and sensitivity. One of the major problems in interferometry imaging is that it involves an ill-posed inverse problem, because only a few Fourier components (visibility points) can be acquired by a radio interferometer. Compressed Sensing (CS) theory is a paradigm to solve many underdetermined inverse problems and has shown its strength in radio astronomy. This thesis focuses on the methodology of Multichannel Compressed Sensing data reconstruction and its application in radio astronomy. For instance, radio transients are an active research field in radio astronomy but their detection is a challenging problem because of low angular resolution and low signal-to-noise observations. To address this issue, we investigated the sparsity of temporal information of radio transients and proposed a spatial-temporal sparse reconstruction method to efficiently detect radio sources. Experiments have shown the strength of this sparse recovery method compared to the state-of-the-art methods. A second application is concerned with multi-wavelength radio interferometry imaging in which the data are degraded differently in terms of wavelength due to the wavelength-dependent varying instrumental beam. Based on a source mixture model, a novel Deconvolution Blind Source Separation (DBSS) model is proposed. The DBSS problem is not only non-convex but also ill conditioned due to convolution kernels. Our proposed DecGMCA method, which benefits from a sparsity prior and leverages an alternating projected least squares, is an efficient algorithm to tackle simultaneously the deconvolution and BSS problems. Experiments have shown that taking into account joint deconvolution and BSS gives much better results than applying sequential deconvolution and BSS.

L'analyse des propriétés statistiques de la distribution de la matière dans le cosmos (Grandes Structures, LSS or Large Scale Structure) est l'une des principales sondes cosmologiques qui permettent l'étude du modèle standard cosmologique, en particulier les paramètres caractérisant la matière noire et l'énergie noire. Les Oscillations Acoustiques Baryoniques (BAO's) sont l'une des mesures qui peuvent être extraites de l'étude de la distribution de matière à grande échelle (LSS).L'observation de la distribution cosmique de la matière à partir de l'émission à 21 cm de l'hydrogène atomique neutre (HI) est une nouvelle méthode, complémentaire des relevés optiques pour cartographier la distribution de la matière dans le cosmos. La méthode de cartographie d'intensité (Intensity Mapping) a été proposée depuis moins d'une dizaine d'années comme une méthode efficace pour cartographier en trois dimensions l'émission radio à 21 cm. Elle n'implique en particulier pas la détection des objets individuels (galaxies), et peut donc être effectué avec des instruments plus modestes en taille que ceux comme SKA ou FAST qui sont conçus pour détecter les galaxies à 21 cm à des distances cosmologiques. Des interféromètres radio utilisant un ensemble de réflecteurs cylindriques ou paraboliques fixes, observant le ciel en mode transit sont adaptés à la cartographie d'intensité. Le mode d'observation spécifique de ce type de radio télescope en cartographie d'intensité est étudié dans le cadre de ce travail de thèse. On montre en particulier qu'une méthode spécifique de reconstruction des cartes du ciel à partir des visibilités peut être appliquée aux observations de ces interféromètres fonctionnant en mode transit. Cette méthode correspond à la décomposition en modes m des harmoniques sphériques et est très performante pour la reconstruction de grandes zones du ciel observées en mode transit. Un code de reconstruction fondé sur ce principe a été développé, ainsi que différents critères de comparaison des performances instrumentales, comme le lobe d'antenne synthétisé, le spectre de bruit sur les cartes reconstruites et la réponse globale de l'instrument dans le plan (l,m) des harmoniques sphériques. La méthode a été appliquée à différentes configurations des interféromètres composés de réflecteurs paraboliques ou cylindriques dans le cadre des projets PAON-4 et Tianlai. Outre l'optimisation des configurations des interféromètres Tianlai et PAON-4, le travail présenté inclut une première application de la méthode aux données PAON-4. / The analysis of the statistical properties of the distribution of matter in the cosmos (LSS or Large Scale Structure) is one of the main cosmological probes that allow the study of the cosmological standard model, in particular the parameters characterizing dark matter and dark energy. Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO's) are one of the measurements that can be extracted from the study of matter distribution in large-scale structure (LSS).The observation of the cosmic distribution of the matter from neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) 21 cm emission is a new method, complementary to the optical observation to map the distribution of matter in the cosmos. In the last decade, the Intensity Mapping method has been proposed as an effective method for mapping the 21cm radio emission in three dimensions. In particular, it does not require the detection of individual objects (galaxies), and can therefore be performed with instruments smaller in size than those such as SKA or FAST, which are designed to detect 21 cm galaxies at cosmological distances. A radio interferometer using a set of fixed cylindrical or parabolic reflectors observing the sky in transit mode are suitable instruments for intensity mapping surveys. The specific observational mode from this type of radio telescope by intensity mapping is studied in the context of this thesis. We show in particular that a specific sky maps reconstruction method from the visibilities can be applied to the observations of these interferometers operating in transit mode. This method corresponds to the m-modes decomposition of the spherical harmonics and is very efficient for the reconstruction of large sky areas observed in transit mode. A reconstruction code based on this principle has been developed, as well as different criteria for the comparison of instrumental performances, such as the synthesized antenna lobe, the noise spectrum of the reconstructed maps and the overall instrument response in the spherical harmonics (l,m) plane. The method has then been applied to different configurations of interferometers composed of parabolic or cylindrical reflectors in the PAON-4 and Tianlai projects. In addition to optimizing the Tianlai and PAON-4 interferometer configurations, the work presented here includes a first application of the method to the PAON-4 data.