Airborne SAR tomography (TomoSAR) 3D image reconstruction can be realized with combination of 2D imaging algorithms and compressed sensing (CS) algorithms. However, most typical CS algorithms cannot achieve a balance between algorithm efficiency and 3D reconstruction accuracy. Due to difficulties in flight path control of airborne SAR, it is hard to realize registration of SAR images with frequency-domain imaging algorithms because of time-varying baseline. To address these problems, an efficient 3D image reconstruction method for airborne TomoSAR based on back projection (BP) algorithm and improved adaptive iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm (IA-ISTA) is proposed. First, 2D images are achieved with BP algorithm on the ground plane. After registration of SAR images, 3D image reconstruction results in the elevation direction are realized with IA-ISTA. Selection criterion of IA-ISTA parameters are given in this paper. At last, final 3D image reconstruction results are achieved after geometrical transformation based on geometric relationship. Both simulated data and measured data of a P-band airborne TomoSAR system are used. 3D image reconstruction results show that the proposed method outperforms traditional methods regarding efficiency and accuracy, which proves the validity and practicality of the proposed method.

Microwave photonic synthetic aperture radar (MWP-SAR) offers a larger signal bandwidth than conventional SAR, and its theoretical resolution can be improved to centimeter level. To achieve same order of magnitude resolution in the azimuth direction, long synthetic aperture is always required, which results in extremely high requirements for the accuracy of imaging procedure. Compared with the conventional SAR imaging algorithms, two major problems should be considered: 1) the scattering characteristics of target might vary from the frequency of signal and the angle of incidence, which seriously affects the coherence of received echo and 2) the imaging of the MWP-SAR system is more sensitive to motion errors and therefore requires higher accuracy of motion compensation processing. To solve the above issues, a high-precision imaging method for MWP-SAR is proposed. First, based on the attribute scattering center (ASC) model, this article analyzes the target scattering characteristics with different frequencies and incident angles. Then, according to the influence of scattering phase on MWP-SAR imaging, an optimal subaperture division algorithm is proposed to guarantee the coherence of each subaperture data and better imaging results. Furthermore, to compensate for the effects of high-order motion errors, this article proposes a motion error estimation algorithm based on subimage registration, where the full-aperture high-order motion errors can be divided into multiple linear components, and the flight trajectory of platform can be accurately reconstructed. Finally, a full-aperture time-domain high-precision imaging method is presented, and the effectiveness of the proposed formation is verified by both simulation and actual airborne MWP-SAR data processing.

Frequency modulation continuous wave (FMCW) Lidar inevitably suffers from vibration and nonlinear frequency modulation, which influences the ranging and imaging results. In this paper, we analyze the impact of vibration error coupled with nonlinearity error on ranging for FMCW Lidar, and propose a purely theoretical approach that simultaneously compensates for time-varying vibration and nonlinearity in one-period triangular FMCW (T-FMCW) signals. We first extract the localized characteristics of dechirp signals in time-frequency domain by using a second-order synchro-squeezing transform (second-order SST), and establish an instantaneous ranging model based on second-order SST which can characterize the local distributions of time-varying errors. Second, we estimate the nonlinearity error by using time-frequency information of an auxiliary channel and then preliminarily eliminate the error from the instantaneous measurement range. Finally, we construct a particle filtering (PF) model for T-FMCW using the instantaneous ranging model to compensate for the time-varying vibration error and the residual nonlinearity error, and calculate the range of target by using triangular symmetry relations of T-FMCW. Experimental tests prove that the proposed method can accurately estimate the range of target by compensating for the time-varying vibration and the nonlinearity errors simultaneously in one-period T-FMCW signal.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems have the capacity for day-and-night and all-weather surveillance, which has become increasingly indispensable for military surveillance and global comprehensive environmental monitoring. With the development of the high-resolution SAR imaging technique, studies on SAR jamming have also received much interest. Traditional jamming methods are based on linear-frequency-modulated (LFM) signals, and this method can achieve high main-lobe jamming gain. However, its sidelobe jamming energy is very low. To solve this issue, a novel nonlinear frequency modulation (NLFM) waveform design method for SAR jamming is proposed in this paper. Compared with LFM waveforms, the designed waveforms have the same main-lobe jamming gain and very high sidelobes, which can significantly improve jamming performance. Moreover, detailed simulation experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the newly proposed jamming scheme.

With the exploration of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), the requirements for its functionality, precision, and response time are inevitably increasing, in which the technical core is the generation, reception, and processing of wideband signals with low time cost. Owing to the excellent performance of modern photonics, such as the ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB), flat response, low transmission loss, fast analog signal processing, and microwave photonics (MWP) promises to be an appropriate solution to improve the capability of SAR in resolution, coverage, and efficiency. However, on the one hand, due to the high sensitivity of optical fiber, moisture, temperature, or physical vibration can produce an unknown extra propagation delay. On the other hand, the wavelength shift effect should be taken into consideration for the UWB system. Thereby, under very high resolution (VHR) circumstance, two-dimensional (2-D) defocus including migration through resolution cells (MTRC) and azimuth phase error (APE) becomes a challenge for MWP SAR imaging. Unfortunately, existing 2-D autofocus approaches concerning motion errors inherently fail for the commonly underlying assumption that the prominent nonsystematic residual range cell migration (RCM) is global in the azimuth time domain. In this article, we analyze the effects of the above-mentioned negative factors in the image processing of range migration algorithm (RMA) and reveal the structural characteristics of the 2-D phase errors. A novel two-step postprocessing compensation strategy is developed, and experiments on real data acquired by an airborne MWP SAR system demonstrate its effectiveness.