OFDM Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging with Sufficient Cyclic Prefix

The existing linear frequency modulated (LFM) (or step frequency) and random noise synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems may correspond to the frequency hopping (FH) and direct sequence (DS) spread spectrum systems in the past second and third generation wireless communications. Similar to the current and future wireless communications generations, in this paper, we propose OFDM SAR imaging, where a sufficient cyclic prefix (CP) is added to each OFDM pulse. The sufficient CP insertion converts an inter-symbol interference (ISI) channel from multipaths into multiple ISI-free subchannels as the key in a wireless communications system, and analogously, it provides an inter-range-cell interference (IRCI) free (high range resolution) SAR image in a SAR system. The sufficient CP insertion along with our newly proposed SAR imaging algorithm particularly for the OFDM signals also differentiates this paper from all the existing studies in the literature on OFDM radar signal processing. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the high range resolution performance of our proposed CP based OFDM SAR imaging algorithm.Comment: This version has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 201

IRCI Free Range Reconstruction for SAR Imaging with Arbitrary Length OFDM Pulse

Our previously proposed OFDM with sufficient cyclic prefix (CP) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging algorithm is inter-range-cell interference (IRCI) free and achieves ideally zero range sidelobes for range reconstruction. In this OFDM SAR imaging algorithm, the minimum required CP length is almost equal to the number of range cells in a swath, while the number of subcarriers of an OFDM signal needs to be more than the CP length. This makes the length of a transmitted OFDM sequence at least almost twice of the number of range cells in a swath and for a wide swath imaging, the transmitted OFDM pulse length becomes long, which may cause problems in some radar applications. In this paper, we propose a CP based OFDM SAR imaging with arbitrary pulse length, which has IRCI free range reconstruction and its pulse length is independent of a swath width. We then present a novel design method for our proposed arbitrary length OFDM pulses. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performances of the OFDM pulse design and the arbitrary pulse length CP based OFDM SAR imaging.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures, regular pape