Development of Onboard SAR Processor Using COTS GPU

Recent advances in synthetic aperture radar satellite performance has increased the volume of data on orbit and the time taken to transmit the data to the ground. As a result, the demand to shorten the time from data acquisition to delivery to the customer is increasing. To satisfy these demands, we are developing an onboard processing unit for on orbit image processing, information extraction processing using artificial intelligence and coherent change detection processing, which are conventionally performed on the ground. The feature of our developed onboard processing unit is the use of commercial graphics processing unit as a processing device. This paper describes operation examples and the development status of the onboard processing unit.