Point Spread Function Estimation for Airborne Three-Dimensional Synthetic Aperture Radar

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is widely used for ground and structure imaging, both in two and three dimensions. The author is working on a three-dimensional (3D) imaging method that aims to reduce the flight time and the amount of data collected through the calculation and optimization of a complex radar carrier trajectory, which is a computationally heavy process. This paper proposes a method of pre-calculating the point spread functions (PSF) for specific potential aperture points that can be used later to estimate the PSF for a trajectory, allowing for efficient trajectory optimization. Three coordinate systems are considered and compared in terms of computational complexity and accuracy, and have been proven to be usable in certain applications. The proposed method can facilitate the development of 3D SAR.