TMS320C66x multicore DSP efficiency in radar imaging applications

Radar imaging is a very attractive application of digital signal processing widely used in modern space-, air- and ground-borne systems. Radar imaging algorithms are featured with very high computational requirements. New trends in processor platforms with a high level of computational power are very important for radar imaging implementation. TMS320C66x multicore DSP from Texas Instruments is one of a promising computational platform for radar imaging systems. It demonstrates good performance in embedded computing with low power consumptions. A test task implementation on TMS320C6678 multicore DSP is considered in this paper. The test task is described and implemented stage by stage on one core of TMS320C6678 device with an analysis of processing time limitations. 8-core implementation is considered then. It is shown that test task is done in 4.9 ms with 1 core and 0.99 ms with 8 cores implementation. The paper demonstrates an efficiency of TMS320C66x DSP platform in radar imaging applications and discusses the questions of an efficient multicore programming.