Along-track Swarm SAR: Echo Modeling and Sub-aperture Collaboration Imaging based on Sparse Constraints

This paper proposes an Along-Track Swarm Synthetic Aperture Radar (ATS-SAR) system to accomplish the high frame rate and enhance imaging resolution simultaneously. Unlike current along-track Multistatic SAR (Multi-SAR), each platform of proposed ATS-SAR only collects part aperture data. Then, bistatic pair acquisitions are transformed into virtual monostatic sub-apertures, a large is combined in short time. Considering practical motion state difference individual platform, various echo models thoroughly investigated established. Furthermore, Sub-Aperture Collaboration Imaging algorithm for (SACIm-ATS) based on sparse constraints also proposed. An effective phase compensation function designed improve sparsity by homogenizing echo. compressed sensing method can be utilized accurately estimate more azimuth data, obtaining higher resolution. Simulations real measured experiment carried out verify effectiveness SACIm-ATS algorithm. Compared with state-of-the-art algorithms, significantly performance.