Quantum Meets SAR: A Novel Range-Doppler Algorithm for Next-Gen Earth Observation

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 MSc students, Geoinformatics Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy.

2 RASID SARL, Beirut, Lebanon

3 National Center for Remote Sensing

10.22059/eoge.2026.414020.1222

Abstract

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) plays a vital role in remote sensing due to its ability to capture high-resolution images regardless of weather conditions or daylight. However, to transform the raw SAR signals into interpretable imagery, advanced data processing techniques are essential. A widely used technique for this purpose is the Range Doppler Algorithm (RDA), which takes advantage of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to convert signals into the frequency domain for further processing. However, the computational cost of this approach becomes significant when dealing with large datasets. This paper presents a Quantum Range Doppler Algorithm (QRDA) that utilizes the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) to offer a theoretical exponential processing speedup of up to N/(log N)^2 compared to the classical FFT. However, realizing this end-to-end acceleration in practice requires overcoming significant bottlenecks related to classical data amplitude encoding and quantum measurement overheads. Furthermore, it introduces a quantum implementation of the Range Cell Migration Correction (RCMC) in the Fourier domain, a critical step in the RDA pipeline that realigns the received echoes so that the energy from a target is concentrated in a single range bin across all azimuth positions. The performance of the quantum RCMC is evaluated and compared against its classical counterpart, as an isolated operation, and then as part of the full classical pipeline.

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