Correction of geometric distortion in spotlight synthetic aperture radar imagery

Abstract

The polar format algorithm (PFA) is widely used in spotlight synthetic aperture radar image formation. In PFA, the range curvature effect is the main factor that causes geometric distortion of the image and limits the size of the scene that can be well focused. This paper presents a new algorithm for the geometric distortion correction. Analysis and simulation results show that the new algorithm is computationally efficient without image quality degradation.