Efficient sliding spotlight SAR raw signal simulation of extended scenes

Sliding spotlight mode is a novel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging scheme with an achieved azimuth resolution better than stripmap mode and ground coverage larger than spotlight configuration. However, its raw signal simulation of extended scenes may not be efficiently implemented in the two-dimensional (2D) Fourier transformed domain. This article presents a novel sliding spotlight raw signal simulation approach from the wide-beam SAR imaging modes. This approach can generate sliding spotlight raw signal not only from raw data evaluated by the simulators, but also from real data in the stripmap/spotlight mode. In order to obtain the desired raw data from conventional stripmap/spotlight mode, the azimuth time-varying filtering, which is implemented by de-rotation and low-pass filtering, is adopted. As raw signal of extended scenes in the stripmap/spotlight mode can efficiently be evaluated in the 2D Fourier domain, the proposed approach provides an efficient sliding spotlight SAR simulator of extended scenes. Simulation results validate this efficient simulator.