Quality enhancement of image generated with bistatic ground based noise waveform SAR

A new method for quality enhancement in a noise synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image and the first results of its application to the SAR image generated with the use of a bistatic Ka-band ground-based noise waveform SAR (GB NW-SAR) are presented. A SAR image generated with a noise SAR suffers from the masking effect which is tied to residual random fluctuations in noise radar response from bright scatterers in the scene. This is similar to the masking effect present in the deterministic waveform SAR when the signal sidelobes of echoes from bright scatterers may mask the main response from a weaker target. The procedure presented is a variation of the CLEAN algorithm. Knowing precisely the emitted signal and finding positions of the strongest scatterers one may model the echo signal originated from a selected scatterer. Extraction of the modelled signal from the received one reduces the residual fluctuations and makes it possible to clean the image and increase its dynamic range. The final image is constructed from the cleaned signal and the previously removed strongest scatterers. A theoretical background is provided to the proposed procedure and its application to enhance the SAR image using simulated data as well as data generated by the Ka-band bistatic GB NW-SAR is demonstrated. The GB NW-SAR, recently developed and tested in LNDES IRE NASU, may operate in CW and pulse random signal regimes for short range applications.