Simulating the effects of long-range collection on synthetic aperture radar imagery

John A. Richards

doi:10.1117/12.818627

28 April 2009 Simulating the effects of long-range collection on synthetic aperture radar imagery

John A. Richards

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7337, Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XVI; 73370E (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.818627
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2009, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images exhibit a fundamental inverse relationship between image quality and collection range: various metrics and visual inspection clearly indicate that SAR image quality deteriorates as collection range increases. Standoff constraints typically dictate long-range imaging geometries for operational use of fielded SAR sensors. At the same time, system validation and data volume considerations typically dictate short-range imaging geometries for non-operational SAR data collections. This presents a conundrum for the developers of SAR exploitation applications: despite the fact that a sensor may be used exclusively at long ranges in operational settings, most or all of the data available for application development and testing may have been collected at short range. The lack of long-range imagery for development and testing can lead to a variety of problems, potentially including not only poor robustness to range-induced image-quality degradation, but even total failure if longer-range imagery invalidates fundamental algorithmic assumptions. We propose a method for simulating the effects of longer-range collection using shorter-range SAR images. This method incorporates the predominant contributing factors to range-induced image-quality degradation, including various signal-attenuation and aperture-decoherence effects. We present examples demonstrating our approach.

Citation Download Citation

John A. Richards "Simulating the effects of long-range collection on synthetic aperture radar imagery", Proc. SPIE 7337, Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XVI, 73370E (28 April 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.818627

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