Narrow-Band RFI Mitigation in Synthetic Aperture Radars Using Variable Space-Frequency Filter

Radio frequency interference (RFI) in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a daunting challenge, affecting both sensing reliability and image quality. To ensure that SAR remains a powerful tool for Earth observation, this letter presents a 2-D variable attenuation space (azimuth)-frequency filtration (VASFF) method. This framework leverages the time-frequency characteristics of Level-0 SAR data, the RFI power profile, estimated RFI signal parameters, and the SAR antenna pattern to design a novel variable filter. Signal power localization estimates the interference source’s relative position, facilitating filter application. Simulated results, obtained using our open-source emulator, SEMUS, to generate both clean and interference-contaminated raw SAR data, demonstrate that the proposed filter achieves a 2 dB improvement over traditional notch filtering. The framework is further tested on real-life interference events on TerraSAR-X revealing previously obscured image details, validating the framework’s effectiveness.