Adaptive Digital Beamforming for SAR Imaging in Elevation

Conference: EUSAR 2022 - 14th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
07/25/2022 - 07/27/2022 at Leipzig, Germany

Proceedings: EUSAR 2022

Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF

Authors:
Zhou, Yashi; Lv, Zheng; Han, Xiaolei; Liu, Jie; Zhang, Qingjun (Institute of Remote Sensing Satellite, China Academy of Space Technology, Beijing, China)
Wang, Wei; Chen, Zhen (Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China)

Abstract:
Digital beamforming (DBF) spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a promising candidate for achieving high-resolution and ultra-wide-swath (HRWS) images. On reception, digital beamforming technology in elevation can significantly improve the system performance such as its sensitivity, ambiguity level and the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by Scan-On-Receive (SCORE). However, in the wide-swath realistic scenario characterized by mountains and relief, the effect of topographic height would result in a mismatch between the steering direction and the actual direction of arrival and further introduce the SCORE pattern loss (SPL). To solve this problem, this paper presents a comprehensive performance evaluation on SPL and proposes an adaptive DBF processing scheme based on the principle of spectral estimation. Simulation results and real data validate the effectiveness of the processing scheme.