A novel concept of plane grid resolution for high-resolution SAR imaging systems

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an active microwave sensor which is able to produce high-resolution images with day and night capability. Traditionally, the image quality assessment of the SAR system is described by the response function of an isolated point target. However, some man-made targets which are placed together can not be distinguished clearly. As the point target has the characteristic of the isotropic scattering, the retrieval capability for target structure details and contours by using the point target assessment method cannot be assessed accurately in a practical scene. In this paper, a new image quality assessment method (especially for plane targets) is proposed to solve this problem. The definitions of the plane grid and the plane grid resolution are given to support. After giving the scene construction of the Test Field used for measuring the plane grid resolution (PGR), a corresponding algorithm is also proposed. Experiment results show that the proposed assessment method describes the SAR image quality for man-made targets more accurate than the traditional assessment method in a practical scene.