Efficient digital spotlighting phase history re-centering hardware implementation

Date of Award

2016

Degree Name

M.S. in Electrical Engineering

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor/Chair

Advisor: Eric John Balster

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the study of the SAR algorithm digital spotlighting and the hardware implementation of the phase history re-centering portion of the algorithm. The phase history re-centering portion of the digital spotlighting algorithm re-centers the phase history data with respect to the new scene center. This thesis provides a solution that allows for a single precision implementation of the phase history re-centering in hardware that provides comparable results to that of a double precision implementation. In order to attain a higher order of precision the frequency sample values were scaled. Scaling the frequency samples allows the use of single precision floating point data types while maintaining on average 8 decimal places of precision when compared to a double precision floating point data type implementation. By using single precision floating point data types a resource reduction of 46% can be achieved when compared to a double precision floating point data types. The hardware implementation of the phase history re-centering core provides a possible 36X speed up when compared to the MATLAB implementation. Leveraging this design would be a major step towards implementing the entire digital spotlighting algorithm on a low SWAP(Size Weight and Power) system. This low SWAP system may include platforms such as UAV's or any other SWAP constrained system.

Keywords

Synthetic aperture radar, Signal processing, Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Digital Spotlighting, DSP Builder, Radar Signal Processing

Rights Statement

Copyright © 2016, author

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