Publications Details

The spatial variance of ionospherically-induced phase errors in SAR imagery

Brown, W.D.; Cable, G.D.

Images taken with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on an airplane were distorted with phase errors generated by a computer program that simulates the propagation of radar waves through the disturbed ionosphere. The simulation is for an orbiting SAR imaging a scene on the ground. Both the spatially-invariant (decorrelation length projected onto the ground much larger than the scene size) and spatially-variant (decorrelation length much smaller than the scene size) cases are described. The spatially-invariant phase errors can be removed using several different algorithms. Problems and strategies in restoring SAR images distorted with spatially-variant phase errors are discussed.