Full-Aperture SAR Data Focusing in the Spaceborne Squinted Sliding-Spotlight Mode

Abstract

This paper analyzes the signal properties of spaceborne squinted sliding-spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Both the squint angle and the azimuth beam steering during the whole acquisition interval will lead to the Doppler spectrum back-folding. According to the special signal properties of this mode, a new full-aperture focusing approach, which includes three major processing steps, is proposed. In this approach, the first processing step introduces an azimuth convolution and azimuth data mosaic to resolve the azimuth spectral folding phenomenon by generalizing the existing two-step focusing technique for conventional sliding-spotlight SAR data focusing. Afterward, the modified range migration algorithm is adopted to process the resulting raw data. As the azimuth time duration of the raw data is obviously reduced in the first processing step, the obtained SAR image may be back-folded in azimuth. The final azimuth postfiltering step is to resolve the possible aliased SAR image without any azimuth data extension. The proposed full-aperture focusing processor is efficient since only a limited azimuth data extension is required to resolve the back-folded Doppler spectrum and SAR image. Imaging results on simulated raw data validate the proposed imaging approach.