SAR IMAGE ENHANCEMENT BASED ON BEAM SHARPENING TECHNIQUE

摘要

A major problem encountered in enhancing SAR image is the total loss of phase information and the unknown parameters of imaging system. The beam sharpening technique, combined with synthetic aperture radiation pattern estimation provides an approach to process this kind of data to achieve higher apparent resolution. Based on the criterion of minimizing the expected quadratic estimation error, an optimum FIR filter with a symmetrical structure is designed whose coefficients depend on the azimuth response of local isolated prominent points because this response can be approximately regarded as the synthetic aperture radiation pattern of the imaging system. The point target simulation shows that the angular resolution is improved by a ratio of almost two to one. The processing results of a live SAR image demonstrate the validity of the method.