SAR Interference Suppression Algorithm Based on Low-Rank and Sparse Matrix Decomposition in Time–Frequency Domain

Abstract

Radio frequency electromagnetic interference is a relatively common phenomenon, especially for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems working in P- or L-band. Compared with the suppression of narrowband interference, that of wideband interference, particularly of those whose signal parameters have frequently changing property, is still a sophisticated problem. In this letter, a suppression algorithm for interference with wideband and complicated parameters is proposed, based on low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition (LRSMD) in time–frequency domain (TFD) of the signal. The proposed algorithm begins with transforming the SAR signal into TFD. After that, LRSMD based on bilateral random projection (BRP) is applied to decompose the time–frequency spectrum matrix into three parts, a low-rank matrix standing for interference, a sparse matrix standing for SAR signal, and a noise matrix. Finally, inversely transform the sparse matrix into the time domain to obtain SAR signal without interference. The proposed algorithm is applied to a single look complex (SLC) SAR data of Sentinel-1 to validate its effect and efficiency.