Wide-scene airborne ladar imaging exploiting the synthetic aperture technique with terrain observation by progressive scans

Abstract

The image scene is limited by the small size of the spot, which is linked with the short wavelength of the laser in synthetic aperture ladar (SAL). The common wide-scene imaging mode in synthetic aperture radar, i.e., the terrain observation by progressive scans imaging mode, is extended and applied in SAL. A suitable imaging algorithm is also proposed according to the characteristics of the signal. First, the azimuth prefiltering based on the spectrum analysis is adopted to eliminate the azimuth spectrum aliasing caused by the steering of the antenna beam. Then, the improved frequency scaling algorithm is applied to complete the range compression and range cell migration correction. Meanwhile, the Doppler frequency shift induced by the continuous moving of the platform is compensated. Finally, the azimuth compression is completed in the Doppler domain, and the SAL image without ambiguity is obtained with the application of the dechirp technique. Simulation results provide the evidence on the effectiveness of the proposed method.