Highly squinted SAR imaging simulation of ship‐ocean scene based on EM scattering mechanism

Abstract

To investigate highly squinted spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of an electrically large ship target over a rough sea surface, this work focuses on the simulation analysis of SAR images from such a composite scene. For this problem, there are two key issues need to be considered, namely the simulation and the processing of SAR echoes. Considering the first issue, an efficient facet scattering model based on capillary wave modification facet scattering model and geometrical optics and physical optics hybrid method is applied to calculate the electromagnetic (EM) scattering characteristics from a real ship-ocean scene, based on which SAR echoes can be obtained. For the second issue, a non-linear frequency scaling algorithm (NFSA) is employed to efficiently process the highly squinted SAR echoes. Compared with the traditional frequency scaling algorithm, the NFSA extends the frequency scaling operation to the cubic order and makes a more accurate secondary range compression. With the solutions to the two issues, SAR images of a complicated ship-ocean scene under different incident and squint angles are presented and analysed. The reasonable results demonstrate the validity of the simulation approach and the practicability of the model for highly squinted spotlight SAR images.