Experimental Demonstration of a Novel End-to-End SAR Range Ambiguity Suppression Method

This work demonstrates a novel end-to-end method for suppressing the nadir and the other range ambiguities in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. The proposed method is based on a waveform diversity technique that is locked to the estimated ambiguity number of nadir. Nadir is a point like target and is smeared with Up and Down Chirps (UDC) and extended targets are filtered out with the Azimuth Phase Coding (APC) techniques. The residual nadir echo is suppressed with a novel post processing algorithm. A nadir detection algorithm is developed to eliminate the unwanted signal while preserving the useful signal. The proposed technique is verified by various acquisitions with the current ICEYE SAR satellites. The comparison of the SAR images shows that the proposed technique is promising for range ambiguity suppression.