Application of momentary Fourier transform to SAR processing

A common technique in signal and image processing is to extract a portion of the signal by windowing, and then perform the DFT on the window contents. The momentary Fourier transform (MFT) applies to the particular case where the window is moved one data sample along the signal between successive transforms. An alternative derivation of the recursive form of the MFT using general matrix transforms is given. How DFTs and IDFTs are used in the SPECAN (spectral analysis) and SIFFT (short IFFT) methods of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing is described. The MFT and inverse MFT are applied to those methods and the advantages and disadvantages they have compared to the FFT/IFFT algorithms are shown