Interpolation-free algorithm for SAR 2D aperture synthesis

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is capable of producing high-resolution terrain images from data collected by a relatively small airborne or spaceborne antenna. This data collection is done in cross-range or slow-time along flight trajectory and range or fast-time along direction of electromagnetic wave propagation. The slow-time imaging is what distinguishes SAR from its predecessor imaging radars. The high resolution pulse compression based fast-time imaging in range introduces some visual artifacts into SAR imagery due to range skew and phase information anomaly due to residual video phase (RVP). In this paper, we introduce the concept of SAR 2D aperture synthesis that extends the slow-time imaging concept to range and relies on a single frequency instead of chirp. Moreover, our 2D aperture synthesis implementation does not need computationally expensive Stolt interpolation.