Quantum Annealing for SAR System Design and Processing

In the last two decades synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems for Earth observation have undergone rapid evolution in terms of mapping capability and system complexity. Numerous optimization and processing tasks are related to these kind of systems or the evaluation of SAR data. Usually, these problems are solved with the aid of conventional digital computers. However, with the emergence of quantum computers, many of these tasks may have the potential to be solved faster, to be solved with higher precision or to be solvable at all on these machines. Here, we present the conceptual idea of quantum annealing, a specific implementation of quantum computing and apply a real quantum annealer, developed and operated by D-Wave Systems Inc., to two dedicated optimization problems in the field of synthetic aperture radar.