GPU accelerated partitioned reconstruction algorithm for millimeter-wave 3D synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images

3D reconstruction using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging is a computationally complex process due to the large amount of data involved. This paper proposes a partitioned reconstruction method for 3D SAR imaging, which leads to computationally efficient algorithms. The proposed method allows for parallel processing, e.g. using a general purpose graphic processing unit (GPU). Experimental results using a laboratory K-Band (15–26.5 GHz) ultra-wideband SAR system are presented. It is shown that 3D SAR reconstruction with GPU acceleration using the proposed algorithms is 300 times faster than the conventional matched filter approach.