Cause analysis for the blurring phenomenon of shadow edges in terms of SAR imaging algorithms

The shadow is a particular phenomenon in SAR images, inflecting some information of the target. However, the shadow edges are blurred in SAR images. Thus, we analyze the causes for the blurring phenomenon of shadow edges in terms of SAR imaging algorithms in this paper. Taking the range Doppler algorithm for example, we conduct four simulation experiments to compensate for different processing steps and compare the imaging discrepancy among the refocused shadow edges. The conclusions are that the blurring phenomenon of shadow edges in SAR images is mainly reflected in azimuth, and azimuth compression is the major impact-factor to the shadow imaging quality. It is obvious that optimization of azimuth compression should get more attention for shadow enhancement in SAR images.