On-board Payload Data Processor (OPDP) and its application in advanced multi-mode, multi-spectral and interferometric satellite SAR instruments

This paper presents the status of the On-board Payload Data Processor (OPDP), which is meant to be the heart of the SAR instrument. The OPDP is a reliable and intelligent on-board instrument data processing product combining high performance with low-power and a small footprint and has applications in advanced multi-mode, multi-spectral and/or interferometric satellite SAR instruments. The OPDP is (re-)programmable, it can function as the instrument controller, housekeeper, data handler and processor of the instrument data. We present the modular design, a reconfigurable firmware architecture and open system software environment. This makes it easy to apply the OPDP in many different SAR instrument types, as we will address in this paper.