Overview of Techniques for Improving High-resolution Spaceborne SAR Imaging and Image Quality

Abstract

As an important tool for acquiring remote sensing information, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has various modes, including high-resolution wide-swath, multi-angle information acquisition, high temporal observation, and three-dimensional topographic mapping. For any spaceborne SAR system, obtaining high-quality images is a prerequisite for improving the performance of SAR applications. In this paper, we analyze the factors affecting spaceborne SAR imaging and image quality with respect to orbit, platform, payload, and signal processing. We describe high-precision data acquisition techniques, including amplitude-phase compensation, the dynamic adjustment of the central electronic equipment, and antenna pattern estimation. We then present imaging compensation methods based on the improved motion model and tropospheric delay correction, which can achieve resolutions better than 0.3 m. Lastly, we summarize and compare SAR image processing techniques such as speckle noise suppression, azimuth ambiguity suppression, and sidelobe suppression, whereby the equivalent number of looks can be increased to more than 25 and the azimuth ambiguity and sidelobes can both be suppressed by 20 dB.

Keywords

• spaceborne synthetic aperture radar
• imaging processing
• image processing
• satellite-terrestrial system integration