Virtually Developed Synthetic Aperture Radar: Theory, Simulation, and Measurements

This paper describes a novel technique for recovering missing data in ultrawideband synthetic aperture radar imaging applications. The introduced technique is based on spatially locating the major scatterers to regenerate the missing data for any arbitrary aperture locations. The technique is fully implemented in the time domain to eliminate potential artifacts due to domain conversion. To generate high-resolution images using refocusing algorithms such as the global backprojection, complete and correctly sampled data are required. The data created by this method are shown to correct artifacts caused by unbalanced or missing data, allowing the salient pieces of information to become more visible in the reconstructed image. This technique is formulated theoretically; it is then validated using both full-wave simulations and relevant experiments. Initial results indicate that this method is a computationally simple technique that can improve image reconstruction through extrapolation to arbitrary aperture locations. The proposed method can be used when targets are spatially sampled below the optimal rate, and where the aperture is restricted in a substantial manner so that it cannot be extended past the target scene.