Swathbuckler: HPC processing and information exploitation

This real-time system recorded raw returns and processed continuous strip-map, high-resolution (<1 m), wide-swath (37 km) imagery on-board the Convair 580 aircraft with an embedded high performance computing system costing under $100 K. The SAR image formation algorithm was optimized at all levels of the computer architecture to achieve real-time processing over 9000 times faster than the original algorithm specification. The information management system implemented a pub-sub-query environment to allow real-time offboard exploitation of the on-board multi-terabyte database within seconds. Real-time SAR image formation was demonstrated on five flight tests. The completed flights provided 7.3 terabytes of raw and processed imagery to support future algorithm research.