Effect of azimuth bandwidth spreading on SAR imaging and SAR interferometry over the ocean

Radar backscatter measurements over the ocean, from a L-band, tower-based radar are used to study the effect of bandwidth spreading on SAR imaging systems and SAR interferometry. The coherent radar measurements are put through a SAR simulator to generate the image of the radar footprint on the ocean surface. This simulated SAR image is analyzed for resolution and phase coherence. It is shown that as the SAR integration time is increased from near zero, the resolution will improve initially. However, increasing the integration time beyond the scene coherence time will have little impact on the resolution. It also shown that in SAR interferometry, increasing the integration time degrades the phase resolution. Optimum values of integration times and interferometric time delays are suggested for SAR imaging and along-track interferometry, respectively