Real-time SAR change-detection on a parallel computer architecture

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides a coherent, high-resolution, imaging system. The author outlines the principles underlying the implementation of a real-time SAR processor capable of generating linear focussed imagery by combining motion compensation, together with autofocus and phase correction. Finally, the changes between the SAR image and a previous version are detected to indicate significant objects in the scene. These algorithms have been previously developed and demonstrated on a serial general-purpose computer. In considering their transfer onto a parallel architecture based on the i860 Meiko Computing Surface the authors identified the practical restrictions imposed by processor speed, local memory and communications bandwidth, and demonstrated that, generally, the local memory is likely to be the dominant limitation. He proposes a possible architecture which balances the limiting factors as far as possible and meets the requirement for generating fully focussed, undistorted, SAR images with change detection at a real-time rate