Swathbuckler: Real-Time Wide Swath Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Formation Using Embedded HPC

Abstract

This high performance computing (HPC) system processed real-time X-band radar returns into continuous strip-map, high-resolution (< 1m), wide-swath (37 km) imagery on-board a Convair 580 aircraft. The HPC system cost under $100K. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation algorithm was optimized to achieve real-time processing 9000 times faster than the original algorithm specification. An information management system allowed real-time off-board exploitation of the on-board multi-terabyte database. Real-time SAR image formation was demonstrated on five flight tests. The completed flights provided 7.3 terabytes of raw and processed imagery.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2006
Accession Number
ADA521939

Entities

People

  • Josha Corner
  • Richard W. Linderman
  • Scot Tucker

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Algorithms
  • Computers
  • Data Acquisition
  • Data Sets
  • Flight Paths
  • Floating Point Operations
  • Frequency
  • High Performance Computing
  • High Resolution
  • Image Processing
  • Images
  • Network Protocols
  • Operating Systems
  • Radar
  • Synthetic Aperture Radar
  • Three Dimensional

Readers

  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Radar Systems Engineering.