Comparative analysis of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar images synthesis methods for stripmap mode

Processing raw spaceborne synthetic aperture radars (SAR) data and synthesizing SAR images is the main operational task of SAR systems. To date, since the appearance of the first spaceborne SAR, a number of methods for synthesizing SAR images have been created. However, when solving the problems of constructing and system designing of SAR information processing complexes, the question arises of choosing a specific SAR image synthesis algorithm planned for implementation; also, this choice gets more complicated by the presence of a number of criteria that the software implementation of synthesis methods must satisfy. Thus, there is a need to conduct a comparative analysis of the existing SAR image synthesis methods, which is the basis of this work. So, the aims of the work are: to conduct a comparative analysis of the methods of synthesizing SAR images according to the formulated criteria; to develop methods for software and algorithmic implementation of these methods; to evaluate the hardware requirements imposed by algorithmic implementations of SAR image synthesis methods on the computing platform. The article considers a set of methods and algorithms for synthesizing radar images obtained from spaceborne SARs from the point of view of their software implementation on various software and hardware platforms. A detailed analysis of the results of the algorithms’ operation according to various criteria is provided; bottlenecks in computing facilities during the synthesis of SAR images are noted; a positive result is revealed when using optimized computing software libraries. Recommendations are given for constructing a hardware platform intended for the implementation of SAR image synthesis algorithms. The obtained results of the comparative analysis allow us to use them as a basis for designing software and hardware systems for processing SAR information in terms of selecting the most effective algorithm for synthesizing radar data.