Extension of wave number domain focusing for spotlight COSMO-Sky Med SAR data

In this work we describe a method to handle curved orbits in wavenumber domain focusing algorithm for high-resolution SAR data acquired by Low Earth Orbit satellites using spotlight mode. The standard wavenumber domain focusing algorithm make assumptions that start to be invalid when applied to high-resolution spotlight SAR data acquired in spaceborne low Earth orbit (LEO) configurations. The assumption of a hyperbolic range history is no longer accurate for sub-metric spatial resolutions due to the satellite curved orbit. The proposed method is used to estimate the satellite velocity and closest-approach range distance of the rectified effective orbit which minimizes the phase errors over the whole scene coverage. This allows to use all frequency domain focusing kernels developed to focus SAR images acquired with a stripmap mode. We use this method with the ω-k algorithm, and its approximation Fast ω-k (Fω-k), demonstrating its effectiveness to focus COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) SAR images obtaining, respectively, sub-metric and metric azimuth spatial resolution. © 2015, Associazione Italiana di Telerilevamento. All rights reserved.