Wavefront Reconstruction of Elevation Circular Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery Using a Cylindrical Green's Function

Abstract

Elevation Circular Synthetic Aperture Radar (E-CSAR) is a novel radar modality used to form radar images from data sets acquired along a complete or even a segment of a cylindrical geometry above a given scan area. Due to the nonlinear nature of the target signatures on the E-CSAR data sets, the collected data must be focused. In this paper, a novel E-CSAR reconstruction algorithm is proposed. The proposed method uses a new formulation of the Green's function of an E-CSAR scan geometry in which the phase components introduced by the scan geometry can be clearly identified and their effects can be effectively compensated. Additionally, theoretical aspects of the point spread function related to this new Green's function were determined. The feasibility of the proposed technique was assessed using experimental data sets. The proposed method yielded spatially accurate images and exhibited an average execution time in the order of minutes.