An FPGA Implementation of UAV SAR Real-time Imaging Algorithm

Abstract

This paper puts forward a valid method to design the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) real-time imaging processor based on FPGA, a block-wise Phase Gradient Autofocus (PGA)[4],[5] is used to correct the space-variant phase error. The architecture of this processor designs with both fixed point operation and floating point operation to reduce hardware resource, also designs with both pipeline process and parallel process to reduce process time. Experiment results show that system works at 100MHz can process 512MB SAR raw data within about 8 seconds. The good experimental image also proves the validity and reliability of the proposed system.