Cross-Range SAR Reconstruction With Multicarrier OFDM Signals

In this letter, we describe the performance of an efficient method of slow-time synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signal processing based on reconstruction via matched filtering of estimated phase history of ultra-wideband (UWB) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radar signals. The method can be used in conjunction with fast-time matched filtering to form full 2-D SAR images. The novelty of the approach is in using all subcarrier data of an OFDM signal for phase estimation, which then allows for the direct and efficient phase history computation in a method akin to multichannel azimuthal SAR processing. This fact also makes the proposed UWB OFDM SAR cross-range reconstruction resilient to narrowband interference and jamming, as well as allows for good waveform diversity/spectral flexibility potential. Simulation results demonstrating cross-range profile reconstructions are presented and discussed.