High-squint imaging is an effective means to enhance the flexibility and coverage ability of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Although existing imaging algorithms based on linear range cell migration correction (LRCMC) and nonlinear chirp scaling (NCS) can reduce the range-azimuth coupling of the spectrum and the spatial-variant of the Doppler parameter to some extent, they become invalid as the resolution increases. On one hand, the beam rotation of sliding spotlight SAR results in nonlinear azimuth-variant of the Doppler centre, and the traditional deramping operation, which removes the linear variation, will cause spectrum aliasing. On the other hand, these algorithms assume the azimuth-variants of range cell migration (RCM) are consistent in the total swath. However, the azimuth-variants of RCM are different in different range cells, which cannot be neglected in high-resolution imaging. To solve these problems, a novel imaging algorithm based on two-dimensional spatial-variant range cell migration correction is proposed in this paper. First, LRCMC is utilized, and the nonlinear azimuth deramping operation is conducted to obtain aliasing-free spectrum. Then, the azimuth-variant of RCM is corrected by azimuth interpolation and polynomial compensation. Noting that the interpolation coefficient varies linearly with slant range, this can weaken the azimuth-variant differences of RCM in different range cells. Meanwhile, azimuth polynomial compensation can correct the consistent azimuth-variant of RCM, and hence the azimuth-variant of RCM can be totally corrected. Finally, the compression is performed via the range chirp scaling and azimuth NCS. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by computer simulations.

Determining thin layer thickness is very important for reservoir characterization and CO₂ quantification. Given its high time–frequency resolution and robustness, the complex spectral decomposition method was applied on time-lapse 3-D seismic data from the Ketzin pilot site for CO₂ storage to evaluate the frequency-dependent characteristics of thin layers at the injection level. Higher temporal resolution and more stratigraphic details are seen in the all-frequency and monochromatic reflectivity amplitude sections obtained by complex spectral decomposition compared to the stacked sections. The mapped geologic discontinuities within the reservoir are consistent with the preferred orientation of CO₂ propagation. Tuning frequency mapping shows the thicknesses of the reservoir sandstone and gaseous CO₂ is consistent with the measured thickness of the sandstone unit from well logging. An attempt to discriminate between pressure effects and CO₂ saturation using the extracted tuning frequency indicates that CO₂ saturation is the main contributor to the amplitude anomaly at the Ketzin site. On the basis of determined thickness of gaseous CO₂ in the reservoir, quantitative analysis of the amount of CO₂ was performed and shows a discrepancy between the injected and calculated CO₂ mass. This may be explained by several uncertainties, like structural reservoir heterogeneity, a limited understanding of the complex subsurface conditions, error of determined tuning frequency, the presence of ambient noise and ongoing CO₂ dissolution.

Wide-Angle (WA) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has shown remarkable performance in high-resolution mapping, and its mostly used imaging algorithm, fast factorized back projection (FFBP), is efficient, robust, and of low computational complexity. However, trajectory deviations and the system calibration error, introduced by low measurement accuracy, dramatically degrade FFBP's performance. This article proposes the modified factorized geometrical autofocus (MFGA) method for WA-SAR to address the above problems in FFBP. MFGA implements the phase gradient algorithm on defocus subimages at first. Then, a factorized geometrical error hypothesis between subimages is proposed. And the corresponding defocus factors are classified as three independent parts: image distortion, spectrum migration, and phase error. To deal with those problems, MFGA introduces image registration techniques and a maximum sharpness method to calibrate image distortion and phase error. Moreover, in MFGA, based on minimum entropy and least square method, a Doppler spectrum migration correction algorithm is proposed to correct spectrum migration. In the FFBP chain, MFGA is used on subimages refocus and fusion until obtaining a full-resolution image. In our experiments, we compared MFGA and other time-domain autofocus algorithms using simulated data and real data obtained by helicopter and airship with false trajectory and system calibration parameters. The results show that MFGA performs better in terms of the peak to side-lobe ratio, the azimuth resolution, the refocused images' entropy, and processing time consumption. The better performance demonstrates MFGA's advantages in addressing trajectory deviations and the system calibration error for WA-SAR.

Frequency stepping is a widely used technique for ultra-high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Although reducing the burden of hardware, the technique increases the complexity of imaging algorithms due to the inter-subband time offsets and inter-subband errors of delay, amplitude and phase. To address the above problems, an improved ultra-high-resolution stepped-frequency spaceborne SAR imaging algorithm is proposed in this paper. By generating subband images individually, performing inter-subband error estimation based on primary points, and then synthesizing the subband images in the imaging domain, the proposed algorithm effectively avoids the problem of time offsets and significantly improves inter-subband error compensation accuracy benefiting from the high SNR in the imaging domain. Besides, considering the characteristics of non-ideal factors in frequency-stepped SAR, a series of error compensation methods aiming at stop-and-go approximation, ionospheric error and tropospheric delay are integrated to the proposed algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is verified via computer simulations, and real data experiments are also conducted based on both an X-band spaceborne SAR system, Taijing 4-01, and a Ka-band spaceborne SAR system, Luojia 2-01.

Spaceborne multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an effective means to realize high-resolution and wide-swath imaging. However, for spaceborne multi-channel SAR imaging of maritime moving targets, the target motion will cause undesired channel imbalance, i.e., phase error, and further introduce the spurious targets in the image. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel spaceborne multi-channel SAR imaging algorithm for maritime moving targets, which consists of sequential coarse imaging and accurate imaging. The key strategies are to separate different moving targets by coarse imaging and to estimate the phase error based on the relationship between phase errors and amplitudes of spurious targets. First, the quantitative relationship between phase errors and amplitudes of spurious targets is established. Second, based on coarse imaging results, different maritime targets are effectively separated. Then, based on the measured amplitudes of spurious targets, a cost function, which represents the difference between the real target velocity and estimated target velocity, is constructed and minimized to separately estimate the velocities and phase errors of targets. Moreover, to further improve the accuracy of estimation and to suppress the undesired effects caused by target defocusing, clutter, and noise, an iterative strategy is adopted. Last, by auto-focusing, a well-focused SAR image is obtained. The GF-3 dual-channel real data experiment is conducted. The results indicate that the spurious targets are well suppressed, which validates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Combined with terrain observation by progressive scans (TOPS) synthetic aperture radar (SAR), near-nadir SAR (N-SAR) system has great potential for the surface water and ocean topography (SWOT) observation. However, one practical problem of the airborne N-SAR is the non-ideal attitude angle caused by the environment. Normally, the influence of attitude angle error can be considered as a constant squint angle of the system. However, in fact, for the near-nadir SAR system with TOPS SAR mode, the attitude angle error will cause a non-ideal 2-dimensional space-variant Doppler centroid for the receiving data and cause the traditional imaging algorithm failure. To deal with such problems, an imaging algorithm with attitude angle estimation for the near-nadir TOPS SAR system is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the influence of attitude angle error and the signal properties are analyzed. Secondly, based on the analysis, an attitude angle estimate algorithm (AAE), utilizing the nonlinear least square method (NLSM) and minimum entropy criterion, is proposed. Then, based on the estimated altitude angle, without data blocking, a full data imaging algorithm (FDA) is proposed. Its main idea is to obtain an un-ambiguous azimuth spectrum and design an appropriate range-variant azimuth filter through frequency chirp scaling (FCS). The numerical simulations and real data processing demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has good performance on attitude angle error estimation and well-focused image obtaining.