A high-speed synthetic aperture radar processor

The architecture and features of a 3.9-billion-operation 10-Msample/s synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processor which has been developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are described. The processor serves as the primary means of correlating SAR data from the Alaska SAR Facility at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The processor takes data at approximately one-third real time, performs a two-dimensional correlation with geometric corrections, and then outputs high resolution image data to a high-speed digital recorder. Because of its generalized SAR processing functions and programmability, this processor is a powerful tool for near real-time SAR applications