An Improved SAR Based Technique for Accurate Profile Reconstruction

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of accurate contour reconstruction from scattered field measurements. For this goal, an advanced SAR processing method featuring two new approaches is proposed. First, the combination of the phasefronts of the SAR image with its amplitude is used to create an initial guess of the possible positions of the contour facets. Second, a virtual focusing of the field scattered by the geometry under study is used to interrogate isolated sections of the contour to be reconstructed, decreasing the computational cost and ambiguity of the reconstruction problem. It is shown that this processing increases the resolution of any SAR based system without increasing neither the necessary bandwidth nor the cost of the system. Representative results showing the good performance of the new method compared with the conventional approach using much larger bandwidths are presented.