Parameter Design and Imaging Method of Spaceborne Azimuth Interrupted FMCW SAR

Spaceborne azimuth interrupted frequency modulation continuous wave (AI-FMCW) synthetic aperture radar (SAR), known as a novel system to observe the characteristics of ground objects, employs a single antenna to transmit and receive continuous waves, thus different from traditional frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) SAR that needs two antennas. However, due to the single antenna, there is a phenomenon that the transmitting of several continuous waves could be unavailable while replaced by receiving radar echoes. The process of switching the transmitter ON and OFF will leave gaps in the synthetic aperture. In this case, traditional imaging algorithms such as the wavenumber domain algorithm (WDA) cannot acquire clear focused images, resulting in the blurred ones corrupted by ghost targets. To solve the problem mentioned above, this letter presents an image restoration algorithm to improve the AI-FMCW SAR image performance. In this letter, there are two main contributions: 1) some key parameters of the AI-FMCW SAR system are designed and 2) a method based on Richardson-Lucy (RL) deconvolution algorithm is applied to AI-FMCW SAR imaging to suppress ghost targets. Finally, a case of the Ku-band AI-FMCW SAR system is given, and experiments via simulated AI-FMCW SAR data are conducted to validate the proposed method.