Time-Domain Autofocus for Ultrahigh Resolution SAR Based on Azimuth Scaling Transformation

For ultrahigh resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR), azimuth spectrum aliasing limits the application of frequency-domain autofocus algorithms. Therefore, time-domain autofocus algorithms are often used for ultrahigh resolution SAR imaging. However, the azimuth deramping operation in current time-domain autofocus algorithms may introduce an additional azimuth-dependent phase. This phase can be regarded as a part of the phase error, which significantly reduces the estimation accuracy of the phase error. To address this issue, this article proposes a new time-domain autofocus algorithm based on azimuth scaling transformation (AST) for ultrahigh resolution SAR. In this algorithm, we first adopt the azimuth scaling operation to avoid the azimuth-dependent phase so that the estimation accuracy of error can be greatly improved. Then, for the azimuth-dependent shifts caused by the azimuth scaling operation, we adopt the alignment processing to remove them in azimuth-time domain. Finally, we can estimate the error accurately from the aligned signal. The simulation and measured data were processed to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.