Inversion of synthetic aperture radar data for surface scattering

A new approach based on inverse scattering is proposed and tested for quantitatively accurate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation. In this approach, it is demonstrated how a scalar wave equation can be directly solved for SAR image formation when surface scattering is dominant and how the SAR data processing can equivalently be converted back to an inverse scattering problem. In this process, the complex backscattering coefficient, defined by the ratio of the backscattered wavefield to the incident wavefield, can also be estimated from the observed zero-offset backscattered wavefield. The final inversion formula is established to exploit f-k domain computation, and digital simulation results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and performance of the proposed method.