Estimating IMU Heading Error from SAR Images

摘要

Angular orientation errors of the real antenna for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) will manifest as undesired illumination gradients in SAR images. These gradients can be measured, and the pointing error can be calculated. This can be done for single images, but done more robustly using multi-image methods. Several methods are provided in this report. The pointing error can then be fed back to the navigation Kalman filter to correct for problematic heading (yaw) error drift. This can mitigate the need for uncomfortable and undesired IMU alignment maneuvers such as S-turns.