Real-Time Capability of DLR’S Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar Processing Architecture

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) enables the generation of realistic and high-resolution 2D or 3D representations of landscapes. Typically, radar instruments are deployed in specially equipped, low-flying aircraft that capture a significant amount of raw data, necessitating image reconstruction processing. However, the aircraft’s limited onboard processing capabilities (power, size, weight, cooling, and communication bandwidth to ground stations) and the need to generate multiple SAR products, such as slant-range and geo-coded images during a single flight, require efficient onboard processing and transmission to the ground station. This paper outlines the processing architecture of the digital beamforming SAR (DBFSAR) employed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the specific measures implemented to enable onboard processing. We elucidate the essential software optimizations and their integration into the SAR onboard routines, facilitating (near) real-time capability under certain conditions. Furthermore, we share the insights gained from our work and discuss their applicability to other processing scenarios with limited resource availability.