An Efficient OpenGL-Based Image Processing Method on Radar Echo Data

This paper is designed to explore a thinking of a software-based radar data processing to minimize the hardware dependence. Based on the analysis of present coordinate transformation method and by Graphics Processing Unit that can perform efficient parallel computation, a new method is proposed, which will first pre-process those original spoke data of radar into the two-dimensional undamaged azimuth and distance image cache and then convert the image cache into the polar coordinate image required by PPI display end through coordinate mapping matrix. OpenGL texture buffering rendering mechanism will be used for the efficient rendering of polar coordinate image while the multi-threading processing method will be used for radar target detection for undamaged images so as to meet the parallel processing requirement of efficient processing and real-time rendering for radar echo with large amount of data.