A 3D imaging method for flexible array SAR based on a distributed POS

Abstract

ABSTRACT The longer the baseline length of an airborne array synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is, the richer the ground object information can be resolved. The airborne array flexible SAR can overcome the limitation that the baseline length is limited by the belly length by attaching the antenna to the wing. However, fusing the airborne array flexible SAR distributed position and orientation system (POS) data under the wing and the belly is a major difficulty. To address this issue, the paper analyzes the inconsistency of airborne array flexible SAR data with a distributed POS and proposes a three-dimensional imaging method of airborne array flexible SAR based on distributed POS by fusing the Doppler centre, yaw angle and time of the observation data. By using distributed POS data, flexible data can obtain higher resolution than single-POS processing. The experiment of airborne array flexible SAR data proves the superiority of the proposed method.