Sparse Flight Array SAR Downward-Looking 3-D Imaging Based on Compressed Sensing

In this letter, we combine the airborne cross-track array synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique and the sparse flight sampling method with a criterion of Barker code to generate a high-resolution downward-looking 3-D image. Furthermore, we propose an effective image reconstruction algorithm that is able to obtain image quality even with sparse sampling. Exploiting interferometry makes the SAR image sparsely represented in frequency domain, which can be naturally reconstructed with compressed sensing (CS) theory with sufficient precision and quality. The results of the simulation and experimental data of the anechoic chamber are presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of the algorithm.