Multipath in Squinted SAR Imagery

Abstract:
The detection and identification of multipath scattering events is often vital in enabling SAR imagery to be correctly exploited, especially over urban areas where the effect is often commonplace. Historically, most SAR systems were limited to broadside data collects where multipath scattering events appear as down range artefacts in both slant and ground plane imagery. In this paper, we show this to be incorrect for the more general case of squinted collections. We show how the direction of multipath scattering events can be predicted for a given squint and grazing angle and suggest collection geometries that assist in the identification of multipath artefacts.