Processing of Bistatic SAR Data with Nonlinear Trajectory Using a Controlled-SVD Algorithm

Abstract

The nonlinear trajectory and bistatic characteristics of general bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can cause severe two-dimensional space-variance in the echo signal, and therefore it is difficult to focus the echo signal directly using the traditional frequency-domain imaging algorithm based on the assumption of azimuth translational invariance. At present, the state-of-the-art nonlinear trajectory imaging algorithm is based on singular value decomposition (SVD), which has the problem that SVD may be not controlled, and thus may lead to a high imaging complexity or low imaging accuracy. Therefore, this article proposes a nonlinear trajectory SAR imaging algorithm based on controlled SVD (CSVD). First, the chirp scaling algorithm is used to correct the range space-variance, and then SVD is used to decompose the remaining azimuth space-variant phase, and the first two feature components after SVD are integrated to make them be represented by a new feature component. Finally, the new feature component is used for interpolation to correct the azimuth space-variance. The simulation results show that the proposed CSVD can further improve the image quality compared with SVD-Stolt.