A SAR processor based on two-dimensional FFT codes

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processor approach based on two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (FFT) codes coupled with an asymptotic evaluation of the unit response function is presented. For the latter, no approximation is made to the distance function, so that the full range of geometric aberrations is analytically considered, enabling an effective reference filter to be designed. The two-dimensional FFTs were designed as to run on computers of very limited memory: the required FFT is computed by means of FFTs of lower order. Two FFT codes were considered: one is faster and allows full or reduced (quick look or multilook) resolution performance to be obtained easily; the second is slower but allows the use of a space-varying filter and/or investigations on limited portions (zoom) of the image. Both codes are suited to parallel processing, e.g. by a transputer net. A full discussion on computer memory and time requirements is presented as well as first examples of image processing results     

An efficient SAR parallel processor

A parallel architecture especially designed for a synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) processing algorithm based on an appropriate two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (FFT) code is presented. The algorithm is briefly summarized, and the FFT code is given for the one-dimensional case, although all results can be immediately generalized to the double FFT. The computer architecture, which consists of a toroidal net with transputers on each node, is described. Parametric expressions for the computational time of the net versus the number of nodes are derived. The architecture allows drastic reduction of the processing time, preserving elaboration accuracy and flexibility     

Efficient and high precision space-variant processing of SAR data

We investigate the space-variance of the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) transfer function due to focus depth variation and Earth rotation effect. We introduce a procedure for efficient space-variance compensation which is based on the use of a nonstandard Fourier transform (FT). A number of experiments confirming theoretical results are presented     

Phase quantized SAR signal processing: theory and experiments

A complete theory of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing from phase-only data is presented, for both analogue and coded raw signals and reference functions. Appropriate processing architectures are presented as well as quality indexes to judge performance of the selected coding. The analysis encompasses both images and interferometric fringes for interferometry SAR (IFSAR) application. Theoretical results are validated by a large number of experiments, comparing the performance of the suggested coding levels, and their combinations between raw and reference functions. Experiments are extended until the comparison of final digital elevation models     

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.     

Theory and experiments on hard-limited SAR imaging

Known results in the area of hard-limited array theory are extended and generalized for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) applications in order to obtain a significant reduction of the required transmission channel bandwidth. The results provide a theoretical basis for subsequent numerical experiments related to the SIR-B mission. The SAR signal is hard-limited (at the offset frequency, after the heterodyne process) and filtered, and the restored signal is processed in the conventional way to obtain the image of the pertinent scene. Results of this experiment may be useful in assessing image degradation due to 1-b coding