An Efficient Approach With Scaling Factors for TOPS-Mode SAR Data Focusing

The Terrain Observation by Progressive Scans (TOPS) mode is a novel spaceborne imaging mode which can be used to obtain wide-swath coverage and overcome major drawbacks in conventional ScanSAR. An efficient full-aperture imaging approach, which takes advantage of the two-step focusing technique and the azimuth baseband scaling operation, is presented for processing the TOPS-mode synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. First, the proposed two-step focusing technique for spotlight and sliding spotlight SAR data focusing is adopted to resolve the aliased Doppler spectrum. Afterward, the following extended chirp scaling processing procedure with azimuth scaling factors is used to implement the residual TOPS raw-data focusing. Since the use of subapertures is avoided and only a limited azimuth-data extension is required, this algorithm is highly efficient. Simulation results validate the proposed imaging approach.