A TerraSAR-X Experiment for Validation of Nadir Echo Suppression through Waveform Encoding and Dual-Focus Post-Processing

Abstract:
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a powerful remote sensing technique providing high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface. The pulsed operation of SAR may cause nadir echoes in SAR images, which significantly affect the image quality and are therefore avoided through proper selection of the pulse repetition frequency (PRF). As an alternative, a novel concept for nadir echo suppression using waveform encoding and dual-focus post-processing can be exploited to alleviate the constraint on the PRF selection. This work validates this technique though a TerraSAR-X experiment. An acquisition has been performed with up- and down-chirp variation on a scenario, where the nadir echo is expected to appear, and suppression of the nadir echo by means of the proposed post-processing approach has been demonstrated.