An Imaging Method With Array Factor Synthesis in Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radiometers

Abstract

In this letter, an imaging method with array factor synthesis in synthetic aperture interferometric radiometers (SAIRs) is presented. The presented method can efficiently control the characteristics of the equivalent array factor of SAIR, such as null position and depth, sidelobe level, and so on, which will be beneficial in the presence of potential interferences, such as radio frequency interference. The method is based on the formulation that the SAIR array is equivalent to a phased array with a virtual antenna element located in each baseline. The previous built-in method and the conventional Fourier inverse method can be seen as a special case of the presented one. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the presented method.