TABLE OF CONTENTS The SEASAT, ERS-1, and ERS-2 satellites have provided images of high quality and sparked many developments in radar remote sensing. These satellites, with the data acquired in the stripmap mode, provide multilook images of 25-m resolution in a 100-km swath.
The success of the satellites has prompted further developments.
For data acquired in a nonsquinted, stripmap mode, the most common processing algorithm is the RDA. However, the RDA is a precision processing algorithm, and does not usually yield images in real time. Can a faster algorithm be found that can produce images in real time, perhaps at a lower resolution? With such an algorithm, the operator can browse through the acquired data and decide if a high resolution image of a particular area is desired [1].
Can the swath width be increased, perhaps at the expense of reducing the resolution? In the stripmap mode, each target is swept by the complete footprint; that is, the exposure time is proportional to the size of the azimuth footprint. If the full resolution is not required, then each target does not have to be illuminated by the entire exposure time of the beam. The reduction in the exposure time means that the beam can spend time elsewhere, illuminating another part of the Earth. This is the basic idea behind another SAR operating mode the Scanning Synthetic Aperture Radar (ScanSAR) mode of RADARSAT.
It turns out that quick-look processing of stripmap data and the operational processing of ScanSAR data can take...
