A parallel programming tool for SAR processors

Abstract

In the context of Italian Space Agency COSMO SkyMed project a quantitative and qualitative study of a set of image processing algorithms for SAR Processors has been carried out. The algorithms showed some interesting patterns in terms of structure and parallelism exploitation. During the activity of prototyping and analysis, an abstraction (SPE Chain Model) of the algorithmic behaviour has been defined in order to simplify performance modeling, design and implementation of parallel image processing algorithms. According to the defined abstraction, a parallel programming tool (SPE- Sar Parallel Executor) has been developed. SPE enables the implementation of efficient, structured and object oriented parallel image processing algorithms conforming to the SPE Chain Model and reuse of pre-existing sequential code. A set of image processing algorithms belonging to different classes of applications have been tested to validate both the SPE Chain Model and the SPE programming tool. The results show that no significant difficulties arise in the porting of already existing code to SPE and that writing new parallel algorithms is intuitive and productive and provides, at the same time, concrete high performance solutions required in real-time industry environments. © Springer-Verlag 2004.