The Research on the Space-Time Variation of Phase Imbalance for GF-3 Azimuth Multichannel Mode

Abstract

Azimuth multichannel (AMC) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an advanced technique which can prevent the minimum antenna area constraint and provide high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) SAR images. Channel imbalance calibration is an important topic in AMC SAR signal processing, since it has a great impact on the image quality. The phase imbalance of AMC SAR is not only related to the radar system, but also to the satellite attitude. This paper first models the relationship between phase imbalance and satellite attitude, and analyzes the influence of satellite attitude on the phase imbalance. In the presence of the satellite attitude deviation, the phase imbalance is time-variation in azimuth, and spatial-variation in range. Then, the real data acquired by Gaofen-3 (GF-3) in the ultra-fine strip-map (UFS) mode is used to verify the relationship model both in theoretical calculations and estimation. The result shows that the model proposed in this paper can describe the space-time variation of phase imbalance very accurately. Finally, some discussions and conclusions are drawn and the future research perspectives are proposed.