Synthetic aperture radar: From signal to image

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides information different from those gathered by optical sensors and it acquires data day or night regardless of cloud cover through the microwave spectrum. The SAR processing system is an essential requirement in every ground station in order to properly interpret and fully utilize the information contained in these data sets. This paper describes the processing algorithms that generate images from the SAR signal and proposes the application of SAR ground station development to satisfy such requirements. A SAR ground system is implemented using those algorithms. It generates SAR image products according to processing levels. Experiments conducted in this paper show results comparable to the commercial SAR processing software.