An Airborne VideoSAR High-resolution Ground Playback System Based on FPGA

Abstract

As a novel SAR imaging mode, the ideal state of VideoSAR system is to perform real-time processing of radar echoes with high frame rate on airborne platform. Compared with previous studies on hardware acceleration processing of individual module, this paper makes a further attempt on the implementation of VideoSAR system. An FPGA-based high-resolution ground playback system for airborne VideoSAR including data transmission, imaging, autofocus, geometric distortion correction and display interface is designed in this study. Through the frame-by-frame extraction of radar raw data, which is collected to FLASH during the flight, the process of high-resolution, high frame rate video SAR playback imaging is completed on the ground. It can be verified that the system can convert a frame of 16K×2K raw data into 4K×2K SAR image within 1 second, and is expected to support onboard real-time processing in the future, which provides a valuable reference for the further development of VideoSAR system.