A quick-look imaging algorithm for space-borne strip SAR

A quick-look algorithm for space-borne strip SAR is presented. The algorithm consists of three main steps which are block formation, block processing and block merging in turn. The strategy of every step which is very important for the quick-look imaging is presented in details. Firstly, there are three rules needed to be considered in order to implement the real time imaging during block formation. Secondly, the hybrid algorithm is used in the block processing because transpose is time-consuming and there is only one matrix transpose in the hybrid algorithm. Thirdly, the final processing is block merging. In this step, the change of the geometric scale caused by the variety of Doppler centroid in a block should be considered, which is normal in the space- borne SAR. Presented results confirm the validity of the proposed algorithm.