Simplified Real-Time Imaging Flow for High-Resolution FMCW SAR

• Published in: IEEE geoscience and remote sensing letters Vol. 12; no. 5; pp. 973 - 977
• Main Authors: Gaowei Jia, Buchroithner, Manfred, Wenge Chang, Xiangyang Li
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.05.2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Azimuth; Frequency-modulated continuouswave(FMCW); Imaging; Radar imaging; real-time imaging; Real-time systems; Remote sensing; Signal processing algorithms; Synthetic aperture radar; synthetic aperture radar (SAR); synthetic aperture radar (SAR); real-time imaging; Frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW)
• ISSN: 1545-598X; 1558-0571
• DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2014.2370733

This letter considers the feasibility of a simplified real-time imaging flow theoretically for frequency-modulated continuous-wave synthetic aperture radar (FMCW SAR). The simplified imaging flow is based on the range-Doppler algorithm, whereas the simplifications contain absolving the residual-video-phase correction and performing the second-order motion compensation ahead of the range cell migration correction (RCMC). During the analysis, the platform movement within the transmission of a sweep is considered. Moreover, the hardware technique, i.e., the enhanced direct memory access, is used to improve the efficiency of the bulk RCMC. Eventually, the simplified imaging flow is evaluated in terms of quality and efficiency by using real Ku-band FMCW SAR data. The results indicate that the simplified method could produce SAR imagery of high resolution (0.25 m × 0.25 m) in real time, with a speed-up factor of 2.77 comparing with the frequency scaling algorithm.