An Image-Domain Least <italic>L</italic>¹-Norm Method for Channel Error Effect Analysis and Calibration of Azimuth Multi-Channel SAR

In an azimuth multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, the unavoidable channel error will result in virtual targets or azimuth ambiguity, which significantly degrades the quality of high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) SAR image. Calibration of the imbalances between channels has been an important topic. First, to present the channel error effect on the final image clearly, a precise relation between the amplitudes of virtual targets and amplitude–phase error is established by matrix trace, which applies to the case of a certain amplitude–phase error. In addition, the total amplitude of all targets represented by the ${L^{1}}$ -norm reaches the minimum when there is no channel error. Based on this principle, an image-domain least ${L^{1}}$ -norm method is proposed to estimate the phase error between channels. By utilizing the focused high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) images, the proposed algorithm achieves high estimation accuracy. Moreover, no redundant channel is required in the proposed algorithm compared with the subspace-based method. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed channel error effect analysis and calibration method is validated by both the simulated and real SAR data.