Spatial variant apodization on subsurface imagery acquired along circular trajectories

Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave Radar (SFCW) systems have become during the last decade a popular design architecture for Subsurface Radar (SR) applications. Due to its data acquisition methodology, the collected reflections must be imaged using Fourier techniques. This process can produce the presence of sidelobes, reducing the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the displayed data. This paper proposes the use of Spatially Variant Apodization (SVA) techniques for sidelobe elimination on SR data acquired along circular trajectories. The SVA approach was tested on real data yielding promising results.