SMOS-HR Correlator Architecture Processing Study

Within the framework of a phase A study for CNES of SMOS-HR (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity High Resolution) mission, Airbus Defence and Space has performed an architecture and feasibility study for the implementation of the correlator function. Due to the very large number of antennas and relatively large bandwidth, the processing power for the matrix correlation is massive with more than 7500 GMAC per second. An implementation in KU060 FPGA and VERSAL ACAP VC1902 has been performed and performance metrics have been analysed. For both implementations, bottlenecks have been identified and an optimised architecture proposed.