High-performance parallel computation of the multichannel phase unwrapping problem

A parallel model for the solution of the computationally intensive multichannel phase unwrapping (MCh-PhU) problem is proposed. Emphasis is placed on those methodological and practical aspects, which lead to a parallel reformulation of the Extended Minimum Cost Flow (EMCF) algorithm. Thus, a novel dual-level parallel computational model, in which the parallelism is hierarchically implemented at two different (i.e., process and thread) levels, is presented. The validity of our approach has been demonstrated through a series of experiments that have revealed a significant speedup. Therefore, the attained high-performance prototype is suitable for the solution of large-scale phase unwrapping problems in reasonable time frames, with a significant impact on the systematic exploitation of the existing, and rapidly growing, large archives of SAR data.