New slant range model and azimuth perturbation resampling based high-squint maneuvering platform SAR imaging

Abstract

Strong spatial variance of the imaging parameters and serious geometric distortion of the image are induced by the acceleration and vertical velocity in a high-squint synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mounted on maneuvering platforms. In this paper, a frequency-domain imaging algorithm is proposed based on a novel slant range model and azimuth perturbation resampling. First, a novel slant range model is presented for mitigating the geometric distortion according to the equal squint angle curve on the ground surface. Second, the correction of azimuth-dependent range cell migration (RCM) is achieved by introducing a high-order time-domain perturbation function. Third, an azimuth perturbation resampling method is proposed for azimuth compression. The azimuth resampling and the time-domain perturbation are used for correcting first-order and high-order azimuthal spatial-variant components, respectively. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm can improve the focusing quality and the geometric distortion correction accuracy of the imaging scene effectively.