Progressive SAR imaging technique

A progressive SAR imaging technique is proposed as a novel SAR raw data processing scheme in this paper. Different from the classic SAR imaging algorithms which focus the SAR raw data as a whole regardless of the backscattering signal, the novel scheme discriminate the backscattering signal and choose the proper ones to be focused progressively according to some application context while the others will be discarded. The new scheme makes the SAR imaging algorithm not only focus the energy back to the scattering points but also form an image more suitable for some special applications. In this paper, a realization of the scheme present via Atomic Decomposition (AD)[1]-[3]. AD helps estimate the parameters of backscattered signal of a scattering point and detach it from the raw data. With the parameters, the backscattering-signal can be reconstructed and focused. Targets or scatter-points in the scene will be imaged progressively in a sequence of their energy due to the greedy natural of matching pursuit employed during AD. Therefore, the contents in the final SAR image can be controlled by an energy threshold. Besides the interested targets can be extracted easily from the background clutter and this may be helpful for the SAR image understanding.