Weighted LBF for spaceborne general bistatic SAR processing

Abstract

Loffeld’s bistatic formula (LBF) is the first two-dimensional analytic point target reference spectrum derived for general bistatic SAR frequency domain focusing. The phase history is expanded in Taylor series around the individual points of stationary phase of the transmitter-target and target-receiver phase histories, respectively, and thus the common bistatic stationary phase point can be obtained using the method of stationary phase. Unfortunately, it shows limitations for extreme bistatic configurations, namely the highly squinted mode and space-surface application. The weighted LBF (WLBF) is proposed in this paper based on the different contributions of total phase modulation from the transmitter and receiver. The formulae we derived are compared with that of the original literature. The extreme bistatic stripmap SAR data can be focused using WLBF, which accommodates the spaceborne squint geometry using the modified effective velocity solution. A point target simulation example is presented to verify the accuracy of the new WLBF spectrum.