NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Collections About News Help Login
Back to Results
Onboard Interferometric SAR Processor for the Ka-Band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn)An interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) onboard processor concept and algorithm has been developed for the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument on the Surface and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. This is a mission- critical subsystem that will perform interferometric SAR processing and multi-look averaging over the oceans to decrease the data rate by three orders of magnitude, and therefore enable the downlink of the radar data to the ground. The onboard processor performs demodulation, range compression, coregistration, and re-sampling, and forms nine azimuth squinted beams. For each of them, an interferogram is generated, including common-band spectral filtering to improve correlation, followed by averaging to the final 1 1-km ground resolution pixel. The onboard processor has been prototyped on a custom FPGA-based cPCI board, which will be part of the radar s digital subsystem. The level of complexity of this technology, dictated by the implementation of interferometric SAR processing at high resolution, the extremely tight level of accuracy required, and its implementation on FPGAs are unprecedented at the time of this reporting for an onboard processor for flight applications.
Document ID
20120001227
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Other - NASA Tech Brief
External Source(s)
http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/12216
Authors
Esteban-Fernandez, Daniel (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Rodriquez, Ernesto (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Peral, Eva (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Clark, Duane I. (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Wu, Xiaoqing (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 1, 2011
Publication Information
Publication: NASA Tech Briefs, December 2011
Subject Category
Man/System Technology And Life Support
Report/Patent Number
NPO-47789
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

Related Records

IDRelationTitle20120001209Collected WorksNASA Tech Briefs, December 2011
No Preview Available