Staring Spotlight SAR with Nonlinear Frequency Modulation Signal and Azimuth Non-Uniform Sampling for Low Sidelobe Imaging

In synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, geometric resolution, sidelobe level (SLL) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are the most important parameters for measuring the SAR image quality. The staring spotlight mode continuously transmits signals to a fixed area by steering the azimuth beam to acquire azimuth high geometric resolution, and its two-dimensional (2D) impulse response with the low SLL is usually obtained from the 2D weighted power spectral density (PSD) by the selected weighting window function. However, this results in the SNR reduction due to 2D amplitude window weighting. In this paper, the staring spotlight SAR with nonlinear frequency modulation (NLFM) signal and azimuth non-uniform sampling (ANUS) is proposed to obtain high geometric resolution SAR images with the low SLL and almost without any SNR reduction. The NLFM signal obtains non-equal interval frequency sampling points under uniform time sampling by adjusting the instantaneous chirp rate. Its corresponding PSD is similar to the weighting window function, and its pulse compression result without amplitude window weighting has low sidelobes. To obtain a similar Doppler frequency distribution for low sidelobe imaging in azimuth, the received SAR echoes are designed to be non-uniformly sampled in azimuth, in which the sampling sequence is dense in middle and sparse in both ends, and azimuth compression result with window weighting would also have low sidelobes. According to the echo model of the proposed imaging mode, both the back projection algorithm (BPA) and range migration algorithm (RMA) are modified and presented to handle the raw data of the proposed imaging mode. Both imaging results on simulated targets and experimental real SAR data processing results of a ground-based radar validate the proposed low sidelobe imaging mode.

Spectral Domain Sparse Representation for DOA Estimation of Signals with Large Dynamic Range

Recently, we proposed a Spectral Domain Sparse Representation (SDSR) approach for the direction-of-arrival estimation of signals incident to an antenna array. In the approach, sparse representation is applied to the conventional Bartlett spectra obtained from snapshots of the signals received by the antenna array to increase the direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation resolution and accuracy. The conventional Bartlett spectra has limited dynamic range, meaning that one may not be able to identify the presence of weak signals in the presence of strong signals. This is because, in the conventional Bartlett spectra, uniform weighting (window) is applied to signals received by various antenna elements. Apodization can be used in the generation of Bartlett spectra to increase the dynamic range of the spectra. In Apodization, more than one window function is used to generate different portions of the spectra. In this paper, we extend the SDSR approach to include Bartlett spectra obtained with Apodization and to evaluate the performance of the extended SDSR approach. We compare its performance with a two-step SDSR approach and with an approach where Bartlett spectra is obtained using a low sidelobe window function. We show that an Apodization Bartlett-based SDSR approach leads to better performance with just single-step processing.

Optimization of Weighting Window Functions for SAR Imaging via QCQP Approach

Weighting window functions are commonly used in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging to suppress the high Peak SideLobe Ratio (PSLR) at the price of probable Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) loss and mainlobe widening. In this paper, based on the method of designing a mismatched filter, we have proposed a Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Program (QCQP) approach, which is a convex that can be solved efficiently, to optimize the weighting window function with both amplitude and phase, expecting to offer better imaging performance, especially on PSLR, SNR loss, and mainlobe width. According to this approach and its modified form, we are able to design window functions to optimize the PSLR or the SNR loss under different kinds of flexible and practical constraints. Compared to the ordinary real-valued and symmetric window functions, like the Taylor window, the designed window functions are complex-valued and can be asymmetric. By using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) point target imaging simulation, we show that the optimized weighting window function can clearly show the weak target hidden in the sidelobes of the strong target.

Spacial Filter of Weighting Method Based on Spectrum Analyse

The selection of a certain scope angle signal in the traditional method is to switch the hard switches in antennas, this paper proposes a method, which based on a weighting method to filter the signal in certain directions, namely spacial filter. With array antennas，the compositive signal can be acquired, by which the phrase and plus (weighting) of each unit antenna’s signal be adjusted and then the signals be added. In different time, signals can be selected in any scope of directions through adjusting each channels by different weighting. The weighting parameters can be obtained through the analysis of spacial signal and spacial spectrum, and then obtains an appropriate weighting window function. Simulation shows that Hamming window’s weighting is the best among the three representative windows functions. It can obtain a low sidelobe (-44dB) and less rising edge and declining edges. And the paper also give a hardware structure.