Synthetic Aperture Radar Tool and Libraries: A Framework for Geo-Referenced Data Processing and Algorithm Prototyping

Creating a system for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image formation can be a huge undertaking as it requires knowledge of several disparate domains. Researchers may be prevented from applying interesting techniques in a particular domain due to hurdles in working with those areas outside their area of interest. This paper presents the SyntheTic Aperture Radar Tool and Libraries (STARTAL) framework for SAR processing that simplifies adding new data formats and prototyping algorithms. STARTAL provides a user interface for viewing the full data region on ground geometry, selecting sub-regions to process, and viewing processed results. Many common, difficult tasks are provided as libraries for general use. To validate the STARTAL framework, this paper also shows imagery which has been processed with algorithms developed at Utah State University (USU) which are derived from a model-based expression of the relationship between collected SAR data and ground geometry