First demonstration of Azimuth Phase Coding Technique by TerraSAR-X

Abstract

The disturbance generated by ambiguous echoes is at the origin of a basic limitation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) spaceborne imaging: the trade-off between spatial resolution and swath extension. A tool to overcome this limitation is provided by ambiguity suppression techniques. Among these techniques, the Azimuth Phase Coding (APC) shows the appealing properties of having a low complexity and being effective against ambiguities originated by both point and distributed targets. Despite the number of investigations on the APC concept published in the last years, a proof of its capability based on real data is still missing in the literature. This paper focuses on the first APC test experiment based on real spaceborne SAR data. The experiment, realized by using the satellite TerraSAR-X, is described and its principal numerical results are presented.