An Improved Azimuth Signal Reconstruction Algorithm for Wide-Beam Distributed SAR

Abstract

Distributed multichannel synthetic aperture radar (MC-SAR) is a system in which transmitting or receiving arrays are distributed on multiple platforms or at different locations on one platform. The along-track component of the baseline makes distributed SAR promising in high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) imaging such as azimuth MC-SAR. However, the additional channel mismatch introduced by the cross-track baseline (CTB) is considered for the distributed SAR. When the azimuth beam is wide, the azimuth-variant channel mismatch caused by the CTB must be compensated before SAR imaging. First, an improved azimuth signal reconstruction algorithm for distributed wide-beam SAR is proposed in this paper. The azimuth variance of the channel mismatch is considered in a reconstruction filter to further suppress the ambiguity, and the computational consumption is decreased by approximately decomposing the mismatch matrix. Second, the ambiguity suppression performance of the proposed method is analyzed quantitatively. Finally, a simulation and real data processing are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.