A new look at nonseparable synthetic aperture radar processing

The author examines the nonseparable, template correlation approach to digital-strip-mode synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) phase history processing and concludes that it can now outperform the traditional separable approaches in the areas of speed, image quality, control simplicity, and flexibility. A working nonseparable frequency-domain SAR processor is described and evaluated. The image quality is seen to be superior to that resulting from the separable approaches. Based on the working intermediate hardware implementation, the author strongly suggests that future VHSIC and other advanced implementation will provide extremely fast (real time), high-quality, small, flexible SAR processors