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 S100K. 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