An Imaging Method for Spaceborne Cooperative Multistatic SAR Formations With Nonzero Cross-Track Baselines

Spaceborne multistatic synthetic aperture radar (M-SAR) formations can deploy multiple spatially separated receiving phase centers along the along-track (AT) direction to achieve high-resolution wide-swath. However, the cross-track (XT) separation between the spacecraft is inevitable due to the formation design like orbital safety and application potential like the XT interferometry. In addition, the different motion vectors of two or more satellites caused by the Helix formation will lead to the difference of the Doppler parameters at the same range gate. Therefore, nonzero XT baselines and space-variant characteristics pose new challenges to the focusing and phase-preserving of the M-SAR imaging. To this end, an imaging method for spaceborne cooperative M-SAR formations with nonzero XT baselines is proposed in this article. Firstly, a spaceborne cooperative M-SAR formation is demonstrated. Afterward, the imaging method is described in detail. The motion compensation technology and the idea of partitioned equivalent velocity are adopted to solve the problems of nonzero XT baselines and space-variant characteristics, respectively. Finally, the simulations of point targets and distributed targets are carried out to verify the proposed method, and the results show that the precise focusing of spaceborne cooperative M-SAR with nonzero XT baselines can be achieved by the proposed imaging method.