Airborne FMCW SAR Sparse Imaging: Initial Results

Using continuous-wave technology to replace conventional pulse mode, frequency-modulation continuous-wave (FMCW) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) reduces the sensor peak transmission power, and hence minimizes the weight and cost of system, which makes it is very suitably for the short-range airborne SAR imaging. In this paper, we introduce the sparse imaging method to the real airborne FMCW SAR data processing to obtain high-resolution image of surveillance region. In addition, considering the platform motion error in data collection, motion compensation is also integrated into the algorithm implementation to guarantee the exact focus of raw data. Compared with matched filtering (MF) based algorithms, sparse imaging method can improve the image performance efficiently, such as sidelobes reduction, noise suppression, and has down-sampled data based imaging ability for sparse scene. Experimental results via actual airborne data verify the effectiveness of the sparse imaging method in FMCW SAR data processing.