Alaska SAR Facility Scientiﬁc SAR User’s Guide by Coert Olmsted,

Alaska SAR Facility

Scientiﬁc SAR User’s Guide

by

Coert Olmsted, Senior Programmer/Analyst

July 1993

ASF-SD-003

Scientiﬁc SAR User’s Guide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

0. Preface and Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

1. Imaging Radar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

1.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

1.2 Antenna Signal Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

1.3 Scanning Conﬁguration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2

2. SAR Signal Processing Algorithms. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4

2.1 Range Processing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4

2.1.1 Matched Filtering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4

2.1.2 Reference Function and Windowing. . . . . . . .

7

2.2 Azimuth Processing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8

2.2.1 Doppler Variation and Pulse Compression. . . . .

8

3. Accuracy and Geometric Distortion/Correction. . . . . . . . . 10
3.1 Resolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2 Processing Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2.1 Relative Motion and Doppler Estimation. . . . . 11
3.2.2 Clutterlock and Autofocus. . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3.2.3 Ambiguity

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

3.2.4 Range Migration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.3 Miscellaneous Geometric Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.4 Attenuation and Noise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4.1 The Radar Equation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4.2 Speckle and Multilook Processing. . . . . . . . . 15
3.4.3 Thermal Noise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4.4 Radiometric Calibration. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4. Geometric and Geographic Calibration and Registration. . . . . 17
4.1 Geographic Pixel Location. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.1 Location Equations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1.2 Geocoding Algorithms. . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.2 Terrain Induced Distortion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2.1 Foreshortening, Layover and Shadowing. . . . . . 23
4.2.2 Terrain Correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.2.3 Terrain Corrected Geocoding, SAR Image Synthesis

27
4.2.4 Inverse Geolocation and Single Stage Geocoding . . 27
4.3 Image to Image Registration. . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.3.1 Mosaicking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.3.2 Composite SAR Imagery. . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.3.3 Multisensor Image Registration. . . . . . . . . . 31

ii

5. Geophysical Applications Processing. . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 5.1 Ice Motion Tracking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 5.2 Ice Type Classiﬁcation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 5.3 Ocean Wave Spectra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Appendix A. Signal Processing and Fourier Transforms. . . . . . 35
A1 Fourier Transforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
A1.1 Antenna Power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
A1.2 Complex Gaussian (Chirp). . . . . . . . . . . . 35
A2 Stationary Phase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Appendix B. SAR Doppler Shift. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Appendix C. Mission and Product Descriptions. . . . . . . . . . 40
Table C1 Speciﬁcations for ASF SAR Missions. . . . . . . 40
Table C2 ASF SAR Imagery and Derived Products. . . . . 41
Appendix D. Side Looking Radar Swath Geometry. . . . . . . . 42
Table D1 Swath Parameters for Three SARs. . . . . . . . 43

Glossary and Deﬁnition of Acronyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 List of Symbols and Deﬁnitions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 References and Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52