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Step transform pulse compression and its application to synthetic aperture radar systems

University of British Columbia

Step transform pulse compression is a matched filtering technique applicable to linear FM signals. A mathematical analysis of the method is developed and its application to the azimuth processing of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) target returns is explored. In particular, several satellite-borne SAR systems are used as examples to compare the performance of this technique to other approaches. Problems peculiar to SAR azimuth processing including FM rate error, range cell migration, and multilook processing are considered. The computation rates, memory requirements, and complexity of the processing algorithms are also evaluated. The step transform is studied analytically to determine how appropriate choices of processing parameters can be made to achieve acceptable image quality, while minimizing the hardware requirements. A method of range cell migration correction, which can be integrated into the step transform process, is proposed and the corresponding parameter restrictions are derived. The hardware requirements of the step transform for SAR applications, relative to some other pulse compression techniques, are shown to be less dependent on SAR system parameters and more dependent on the step transform processing parameters chosen. A computer simulation program was written to confirm the analytical results.

Text

2010-04-22

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/24091

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of British Columbia

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