A robust channel-calibration algorithm for multi-channel in azimuth HRWS SAR imaging based on local maximum-likelihood weighted minimum entropy

High-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an essential tool for modern remote sensing. To effectively deal with the contradiction problem between high-resolution and low pulse repetition frequency and obtain an HRWS SAR image, a multi-channel in azimuth SAR system has been adopted in the literature. However, the performance of the Doppler ambiguity suppression via digital beam forming processing suffers the losses from the channel mismatch. In this paper, a robust channel-calibration algorithm based on weighted minimum entropy is proposed for the multi-channel in azimuth HRWS SAR imaging. The proposed algorithm is implemented by a two-step process. 1) The timing uncertainty in each channel and most of the range-invariant channel mismatches in amplitude and phase have been corrected in the pre-processing of the coarse-compensation. 2) After the pre-processing, there is only residual range-dependent channel mismatch in phase. Then, the retrieval of the range-dependent channel mismatch in phase is achieved by a local maximum-likelihood weighted minimum entropy algorithm. The simulated multi-channel in azimuth HRWS SAR data experiment is adopted to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Then, some real measured airborne multi-channel in azimuth HRWS Scan-SAR data is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.