SAR resolution in the presence of phase errors

The author analyzes the effects of phase errors on synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The theory is applied to the following question: how does the achievable resolution vary with the carrier frequency when optimum quadratic focus and/or optimum processing interval (synthetic aperture length) are used? Numerous related results are given, so that much of the material is tutorial. For phase errors corresponding to uncompensated motion, the best achievable RMS resolution with any phase error spectrum satisfies the derived equation. For motion-induced phase errors it is seen that resolution improves with increasing carrier frequency when the first term in the expression applies (e.g. for phase errors concentrated at low frequencies) and resolution is independent of carrier frequency when R δ/v/v is the smaller term (e.g. with broad band or high frequency phase errors)