Extended NCS Based on Method of Series Reversion for Imaging of Highly Squinted SAR

In the case of high range resolution and squint angle, current chirp scaling algorithm (CSA) and nonlinear CSA (NCSA) have a finite ability to achieve high-quality images. The problem stems from a range-dependent (i.e., space-variant) cubic- and higher order terms of range frequency, which require sufficient compensation or space-variant filtering, in the phase of the synthetic aperture radar transfer function, and this letter aims at dealing with this problem. First, an inequation is introduced to evaluate the highest order of range frequency terms whose space-variant coefficient has to be taken into account. Then, based on the method of series reversion, this letter proposes the extended NCS which can weaken the range dependence of the considered range frequency terms and achieve accurate range cell migration correction and range compression. Simulation results are presented to validate the proposed method.

I. Introduction

Due TO its all-weather day-and-night long-range wide-swath imaging features, the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is capable of greatly improving radar's information acquirability [1], [2]. Many imaging algorithms had been developed for SAR, such as the range Doppler algorithm [3], chirp scaling algorithm (CSA) [4], range migration algorithm [8], or its modified version [11], etc. Thereinto, the CSA can be carried out effectively without interpolation.