A method of 2D and 3D display of radar terminal base on programmable pipeline

Abstract

In contrast to the ideal 3D display for meteorological radar, there is no 3D mode in the military engineering field. How to realise the 2D and 3D display for general radar terminal efficiently using the local graphics processing unit (GPU), which is impossible to realise with the traditional method of field programmable gate array now, has became an important research direction. In this paper, based on the radar echo equation, elevation was used to describe the three‐dimensional echo. After the three‐dimensional echo data model was built, the shader method with framebuffer objects was employed to display the data, while the data was capped by peripheral component interconnect express using direct memory access. It was designed to display the Plan Position Indicator and the attenuation of radar images with the 2D and 3D shaders. A series of numerical simulations were conducted to avoid image tear or lag. Compared to the methods of graphics device interface and the blend of images, the programmable pipeline of GPU performs well and is suitable for the display of radar terminal.