High resolution SAR imaging using random pulse timing

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a fundamental technology with significant impact in remote sensing applications. SAR relies on the motion of the radar platform to synthesize a large aperture, and achieve high resolution imaging of a large area. However, current strip-map SAR designs, relying on uniform pulsing, suffer from a fundamental trade-off between the azimuth resolution and the range coverage length. In this paper we overcome this trade-off using a randomized pulsing scheme combined with non-linear compressive sensing (CS) reconstruction. Our experimental results demonstrate significant improvement in the azimuth resolution using the proposed approach, without compromise on the range length of the imaged area.