High-resolution slide spotlight SAR imaging by BP algorithm and heterogeneous parallel implementation

High-resolution synthetic aperture radar presents a significant challenge to imaging algorithms and computing power. Slide spotlight is an important mode that has both high resolution and wide azimuth swath. Generally, in the slide spotlight mode, the performance of conventional frequency domain imaging algorithms degrades because of orbit curvature, the time-variant azimuth chirp rate, and other factors. We adopt the Back-Projection (BP) algorithm in this study to counteract this limitation. We also propose a CPU/GPU heterogeneous BP algorithm to deal with the high computing complexity O(N³) of the BP algorithm. This heterogeneous BP algorithm makes full use of computing resources and accelerates imaging progress, and the design of a scheduling thread improves the flexibility of the algorithm.