Sampling effects in square-law detected synthetic aperture radar

An earlier letter demonstrated that a narrow synthetic radar beam may be generated from square-law detected radar pulses provided the return pulse is incoherent. This technique would have the significant advantage of reducing the required knowledge of the platform location to a fraction of the transmitted pulse length, rather than the fraction of the carrier wavelength required by a coherent synthetic aperture radar. The effect of sampling the aperture is now described, and it is shown that the sampling interval required to avoid unacceptable sidelobe levels can be very much greater than that required by coherent synthetic aperture radar