Performance Analysis of Sparse 3D SAR Imaging

This paper addresses the question of scattering center detection and estimation performance in synthetic aperture radar. Specifically, we consider sparse 3D radar apertures, in which the radar collects both azimuth and elevation diverse data of a scene, but collects only a sparse subset of the traditional filled aperture. We use a sparse reconstruction algorithm to both detect and estimate scattering center locations and amplitudes in the scene. We quantify both the detection and estimation performance for scattering centers over a high dynamic range of magnitudes. Over this wide range of scattering center signal-to-noise values, detection performance is compared to GLRT detection performance, and estimation performance is compared to the Cramèr-Rao lower bound.