Trajectory deviations in airborne SAR: analysis and compensation

This paper concerns the analysis and compensation of trajectory deviations in airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. Analysis of the received data spectrum is carried out with respect to the system geometry in the presence of linear, sinusoidal, and general aircraft displacements. This shows that trajectory deviations generally produce spectral replicas along the azimuth frequency that strongly impair the quality of the focused image. Based on the derived model, we explain the rationale of the motion compensation (MOCO) strategy that must be applied at the SAR processing stage in order to limit the resolution loss. To this end aberration terms are separated into range space invariant and variant components. The former can be accounted for either in a preprocessing step or efficiently at range compression stage. The latter needs a prior accommodation of range migration effect. We design the procedure for efficient inclusion of the MOCO within a high precision scaled FT based SAR processing algorithm. Finally, we present results on simulated data aimed at validating the whole analysis and the proposed procedure     

Role of processing geometry in SAR raw data focusing

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems require that a focusing operation be performed on the received backscattered echoes (raw data) to generate high-resolution microwave images. Either due to platform attitude instabilities, or to Earth rotation effects, the SAR raw data may be acquired in "squinted" geometries, i.e., with the radar beam directed with an offset angle (squint angle) from the broadside direction. This research investigates the impact of the focusing operation carried out on squinted raw data acquisitions performed by SAR sensors operating in the stripmap mode. To this end the 2D frequency SAR processing approach is generalized with respect to conical, i.e., nonorthogonal, reference systems. This allows analysis of the geometric, spectral, and phase aberrations introduced in the images by the chosen processing geometry with respect to the acquisition, and identification of the focusing procedure that minimizes these aberrations. The whole theory is validated by experimental results carried out on simulated data. Moreover, the extension of this analysis to the interferometric case where these aberrations may have a significant role is also investigated     

Motion compensation errors: effects on the accuracy of airborne SAR images

This work addresses the study of the effect of residual uncompensated motion errors due to positioning measurement instrument and digital elevation model inaccuracies on the accuracy of airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. It is shown that these not only introduce phase errors following pure geometric considerations, but they also cause additional aberrations related to their interaction with the SAR processing procedure. Extension to the repeat pass airborne interferometry is also included to show their impact on the resulting interferograms.