FPGA Based On Board Signal Processor for L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs)

Abstract

Synthetic Aperture Radars (SARs) are among the most popular equipments used for imaging the surfaces of earth and other planets. They are generally used onboard aircrafts, satellites and spacecrafts. SARs gather extremely large quantities of data. This huge quantum data is required to be processed into images using various signal and image processing algorithms. Onboard storage and subsequent transmission of this collected data down to an earth station pose a significant challenge in the quality of images generated from the SAR data. Given that the downlink communication channel is air, which imposes limitations on the downlink data rates, onboard processing and compression of the collected data becomes imperative. This paper explores various possible architectures of an onboard signal processor for SARs and attempts to achieve the most optimum design for the same.