Spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a proven technique, which can provide high-resolution images as compared to those produced by traditional stripmap SAR. This paper addresses a high-resolution SAR focusing experiment based on Gaofen-3 satellite (GF-3) staring data with about 55 cm azimuth resolution and 240 MHz range bandwidth. In staring spotlight (ST) mode, the antenna always illuminates the same scene on the ground, which can extend the synthetic aperture. Based on a two-step processing algorithm, some special aspects such as curved-orbit model error correction, stop-and-go correction, and antenna pattern demodulation must be considered in image focusing. We provide detailed descriptions of all these aspects and put forward corresponding solutions. Using these suggested methods directly in an imaging module without any modification for other data processing software can make the most of the existing ground data processor. Finally, actual data acquired in GF-3 ST mode is used to validate these methodologies, and a well-focused, high-resolution image is obtained as a result of this focusing experiment.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image processing requires huge computation amount. Traditionally, this task runs on the workstation or server based on Central Processing Unit (CPU) and is rather time-consuming, hence real-time processing of SAR data is impossible. Based on Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) technology, a new plan of SAR imaging algorithm operated on NVIDIA Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) is proposed. The new proposal makes it possible that the data processing procedure and CPU/GPU data exchanging execute concurrently, especially when SAR data size exceeds total GPU global memory size. Multi-GPU is suitably supported by the new proposal and all of computational resources are fully exploited. It is shown by experiment on NVIDIA K20C and INTEL E5645 that the proposed solution accelerates SAR data processing by tens of times. Consequently, the GPU based SAR processing system with the proposed solution embedded is much more power saving and portable, which makes it qualified to be a real-time SAR data processing system. Experiment shows that SAR data of 36 Mega points can be processed in real-time per second by K20C with the new solution equipped