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SAR -- Brute Force, Real-Time Hardware Implementation

It may not be obvious from the formulation, but the "brute-force" approach to SAR computation is an entirely deterministic one. This means, assuming we ignore for the moment any potential complications due to motion compensation, that the input data can be passed through a pre-configured computational block from which SAR images can emerge in real time. Fixed parameters include:

     Radar PRF
     Radar Frequency
     Aircraft Airspeed
     Aircraft Altitude
     Antenna Beamwidth (Transmit and Received)
     Range Information -- Range gate settings, Range swath of interest, Range resolution of interest
     Azimuth Information -- Azimuth swath of interest, Azimuth resolution of interest

Mechanization of the process requires three steps to reduce the computational load to a tractable level. This process is illustrated as follows:

Integration of this into a full-blown SAR system might look something as follows:

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