| Space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems use the motion of the satellite and digital signal processing to create the effect of a very long antenna for-the purpose of obtaining fine resolution required to produce an image of the earth's surface. Unprocessed SAR data collected by the system is unfocused and looks much like noise. Phase-sensitive processing is needed since the essential information is contained in the phase of the received data. The complexity of the signal processing is affected by the type of platform, the mode of operation, and the configuration of the scenario. In this thesis, a digital signal processing algorithm is described, developed, and applied to actual SAR data collected from the orbiting RADARSAT-1 satellite operating in the strip-map mode with a back-looking radar beam. |
