Title :
Range resolution improvement of airborne SAR images
Author :
Guillaso, Stéphane ; Reigber, Andreas ; Ferro-Famil, Laurent ; Pottier, Eric
Author_Institution :
Comput. Vision & Remote Sensing Group, Berlin Univ. of Technol., Germany
Abstract :
This letter proposes an algorithm to improve the range resolution in airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data by coherently combining an interferometric image pair, i.e., two images acquired with slightly different viewing angles. This algorithm is based on the wavenumber shift principle. In contrast to other methods, developed for application to spaceborne SAR data, the proposed algorithm takes the nonlinear effects due the strong variations in incidence angle in airborne SAR data into account. The proposed method is applied to SAR data of German Aerospace Center (DLR)´s E-SAR sensor. Quantitative verification results are obtained by measuring the resolution of several corner reflectors placed in the area under study, as well as the resolution of speckle of different areas. It is demonstrated that a resolution improvement of almost a factor of two can be achieved by incorporating a second interferometric image, which can be acquired easily with an airborne sensor.
Keywords :
geophysical signal processing; image resolution; radiowave interferometry; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; E-SAR sensor; German Aerospace Center; airborne SAR imaging; interferometric image pair; radiowave interferometry; speckle resolution; synthetic aperture radar; wavenumber shift principle; Area measurement; Bandwidth; Image resolution; Image sensors; Layout; Reflectivity; Signal resolution; Spaceborne radar; Speckle; Synthetic aperture radar; Interferometry; range resolution improvement; synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging;
Journal_Title :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/LGRS.2005.859943