A Two-Stage Time-Domain Autofocus Method Based on Generalized Sharpness Metrics and AFBP

High computational complexity and phase errors (PEs) are the main limitations of time-domain (TD) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging algorithms. Accelerated fast backprojection (BP) (AFBP) algorithm avoids interpolation through wavenumber spectrum connection and is an efficient fast TD imaging algorithm. In order to deal with the image defocusing problem caused by PEs effectively and ensure rapid imaging, a TD autofocus method is proposed in this article, which is based on generalized sharpness metrics and the AFBP imaging model. The autofocus method is divided into two stages. First, for each subaperture (SA), the PE estimation model is established in unified polar coordinate (UPC), where the strong-scattering range-cell pixels are chosen to reduce memory burden and avoid repetitive imaging. The PE estimation is converted into a nonconvex optimization problem. Then, the genetic algorithm (GA) and the maximizing-maximum-pixel-value (MMPV) method are used to estimate the PEs. Second, SA images’ matching and constant PE’s compensation are performed to eliminate the residual PEs. The full-aperture well-focused image is obtained by the coherent accumulation of SA images. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proven by the results of simulation and real SAR data processing.