Improvement of maritime target signatures in satellite SAR images

Abstract:
SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) signatures of maritime targets are often affected by various types of distortions, with negative impact on the classification and characterisation of the targets. Two of these distortions are defocusing and presence of sidelobes. The first one occurs when the radar returns from a scatterer are not accurately focused in a single point but spread out in the azimuth direction. The second one manifests itself around bright scatterers that are surrounded by areas with a much lower radar cross-section. Several techniques exist that try to compensate for those distortions in Single Look Complex (SLC) SAR images, but they are mostly applied to airborne SAR. This paper presents the results of applying these methods to satellite SAR.