Strip Mode SAR Data Processing
Giorgio Franceschetti, Riccardo Lanari · 2018
This chapter presents the basic theory of strip synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data processing. It highlights the point target response and its quality enhancement, as a preparation to all the analysis. The most popular processing codes are examined, showing their similarities and their differences, and pointing out their attractive features and their limitations. Block diagrams of most codes are provided. Compensation of motion errors induced by atmospheric turbulence, a crucial problem in airborne SAR sensors, is considered. The main goal of the SAR processor is the appropriate combination of all the received contributions backscattered by each target to achieve the best resolutions. Although geometric resolutions are a fundamental goal of a SAR processor, it can be argued that judgment of the quality of the point target response cannot reside only on resolving power of the system (i.e., on minimizing the width of the spread function).