Abstract

Deviations from a nominal, straight-line flight path of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) lead to inaccurate and defocused radar images. This thesis is an investigation into the improvement of the motion compensation algorithm created for the BYU inteferometric synthetic aperture radar, YINSAR. The existing BYU SAR processing algorithm produces improved radar imagery but does not fully account for variations in attitude (roll, pitch, yaw) and does not function well with large position deviations. Results in this thesis demonstrate that a higher order motion compensation algorithm is not as effective as using a segmented reference track, coupled with the current lower-order motion compensation algorithm. Attitude variations cause a Doppler shift and are corrected by limiting the processed azimuth bandwidth or by reversing the frequency shift with a range-dependent filter. Another important area considered is the effects of motion compensation on interferometry. When performing interferometry with YINSAR, motion compensating both channels to a single track has two effects. First, the applied MOCO phase corrections remove the "flat-earth" differential phase from the interferogram. Second, range resampling coregisters the two images. All of these changes have helped to improve YINSAR imagery.

Degree

College and Department

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology; Electrical and Computer Engineering

Rights

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