Interleaving fast convolution of 2 signals and multirate analysis with applications to radar imaging

The authors present a novel fast algorithm for real-time on-board high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) processing that can be implemented efficiently in hardware. The algorithm realizes an interleaving of convolution and multirate analysis of signals. The convolution is to perform signal cross-correlation to obtain the underlying radar image. The multirate analysis is exploited to achieve autofocusing to improve the resolution. The complexity and structure of the novel fast algorithm outperforms conventional fast convolution algorithms/architectures for long sequences. The reliability of the autofocusing algorithm has been established from tests with real SAR data