Simultaneous navigation and synthetic aperture radar focusing

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) equipment is a radar imaging system that can be used to create high-resolution images of a scene by utilizing the movement of a flying platform. Knowledge of the platform's trajectory is essential to get good and focused images. An emerging application field is real-time SAR imaging using small and cheap platforms where estimation errors in navigation systems imply unfocused images. This contribution investigates a joint estimation of the trajectory and SAR image. Starting with a nominal trajectory, we successively improve the image by optimizing a focus measure and updating the trajectory accordingly. The method is illustrated using simulations using typical navigation performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle. One real data set is used to show feasibility, where the result indicates that, in particular, the azimuth position error is decreased as the image focus is iteratively improved.