Pre-processing compensation for saturation power loss in SAR data

In this paper, we describe a method for compensating data for saturation power loss due to the analog to digital converter (ADC) in spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments. The algorithm counts the number of saturated points in a block of raw signal data and adjusts the data to regain the lost power. The algorithm compensates well for lost power, showing a correction of up to 7 dB, and agreeing within 1 dB with unsaturated data. If care is not taken In the compensation sort order image artifacts can occur. We describe the methods used and discuss limitations in the application of the algorithm.