Tomographic processing of multi-baseline P-band SAR data for imaging of a forested area

Recently, various attempts have been undertaken to obtain information about the structure of forested areas from multi-baseline synthetic aperture radar data. Tomographic processing of such data has been demonstrated but the quality of the focused tomographic image is limited by several factors. In particular Fourier-based focusing methods are susceptible to irregular and sparse sampling, two problems, that are unavoidable in case of multi-pass, multi-baseline SAR data acquired by an airborne system. We propose a tomographic focusing method based on the time-domain back-projection algorithm, which maintains the geometric relationship between the original sensor positions and the imaged target and is therefore able to cope with irregular sampling without introducing any approximations with respect to the geometry. We assess the tomographic focusing quality with the help of the impulse response of simulated point targets and an in-scene corner reflector. And, in particular, preliminary results obtained with the newly acquired P-band tomographic data set consisting of eleven flight tracks are presented.