Super-resolution and the radar point spread function

Abstract: The effect of residual uncompensated cross-track platform acceleration on the point spread function (PSF) of a synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) system is derived. This is compared to an ap-proximate PSF model originally derived from an optics based argument, which previously has been proposed to be used for the super-resolution of SAR imagery. The PSFs are used in a comparison of three super-resolution algorithms based on a distributed scatterer model. It is shown that assuming no cross-track acceleration is present is better than using the optics approximation and knowledge of the correct cross-track acceleration gives the best performance.