Recent advances in SAR technique

A review is given on SAR data processing techniques recently developed at the Institute of Radio Astronomy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The proposed methods are intended to improve quality and legibility of SAR images obtained with airborne SAR systems. An original method for the estimation of the antenna beam orientation from Doppler measurements and an effective local-quadratic map-drift autofocus (LQMDA) are developed to support the GPS-based SAR navigation system in the task of the motion error compensation. The achieved high phase accuracy allows the application of the multi-look SAR processing technique for suppressing speckle noise and revealing fine details in SAR images. A technique of 3D-imaging of ground surface with a conventional single-antenna, squint-mode SAR has also been proposed. The efficiency of these solutions has been confirmed with Ku and X-band SAR systems.