Synthetic aperture radar imaging simulator for pulse envelope evaluation

Eric J. Balster; Frank A. Scarpino; Andrew M. Kordik; Kerry L. Hill

doi:10.1117/1.JRS.11.046022

15 December 2017 Synthetic aperture radar imaging simulator for pulse envelope evaluation

Eric J. Balster, Frank A. Scarpino, Andrew M. Kordik, Kerry L. Hill

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 11, Issue 4, 046022 (December 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.11.046022

Abstract

A simulator for spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation is presented. The simulator produces radar returns from a virtual radar positioned at an arbitrary distance and altitude. The radar returns are produced from a source image, where the return is a weighted summation of linear frequency-modulated (LFM) pulse signals delayed by the distance of each pixel in the image to the radar. The imagery is resampled into polar format to ensure consistent range profiles to the position of the radar. The SAR simulator provides a capability enabling the objective analysis of formed SAR imagery, comparing it to an original source image. This capability allows for analysis of various SAR signal processing techniques previously determined by impulse response function (IPF) analysis. The results suggest that IPF analysis provides results that may not be directly related to formed SAR image quality. Instead, the SAR simulator uses image quality metrics, such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structured similarity index (SSIM), for formed SAR image quality analysis. To showcase the capability of the SAR simulator, it is used to investigate the performance of various envelopes applied to LFM pulses. A power-raised cosine window with a power p=0.35 and roll-off factor of β=0.15 is shown to maximize the quality of the formed SAR images by improving PSNR by 0.84 dB and SSIM by 0.06 from images formed utilizing a rectangular pulse, on average.

Citation Download Citation

Eric J. Balster, Frank A. Scarpino, Andrew M. Kordik, and Kerry L. Hill "Synthetic aperture radar imaging simulator for pulse envelope evaluation," Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 11(4), 046022 (15 December 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.11.046022

Received: 24 May 2017; Accepted: 22 November 2017; Published: 15 December 2017

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