A Superresolution Wide Null Beamformer for Undersampled Signal Reconstruction in SIMO SAR

Abstract

With single-input single-output (SISO) SAR systems, employing a single transmitter and receiver beam, there exists a high resolution, wide swath contradiction. However, by using multiple receiver beams and employing array processing techniques, this contradiction can be overcome, allowing greater flexibility and a wider range of application requirements to be met. In this paper the use of single-input multiple-output (SIMO) SAR systems for overcoming this contradiction is of interest, and a novel beamformer is proposed for processing in the cross-range direction. In order to fully describe the system, the array manifold vector is utilized, which is a key concept in the design of the beamformer. In particular, this beamformer is a superresolution beamformer capable of forming wide nulls using subspace based approaches and allows the suppression of ambiguities in multiple sets of received undersampled SAR data in the cross-range direction and reconstruction of the Doppler spectrum to form a single unambiguous set of SAR data. Compared to the existing reconstruction algorithm, only a single weighting vector is required for a block of ambiguous Doppler frequencies compared to a weight vector required for each ambiguous Doppler frequency. The capabilities of the proposed beamformer are shown to give an improved performance in ambiguity suppression via computer simulation studies in a representative maritime environment.