HRWS SAR Narrowband Interference Mitigation Using Low-Rank Recovery and Image-Domain Sparse Regularization

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), as a wideband radar system, may be subject to strong interferences with a variety of signals. The narrowband interference (NBI) exemplifies the most typical of its kind, such as the form of radio frequency interference (RFI). With the development of SAR imaging technology, the high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) imagery technology now reaches its maturity to finally take shape in current SAR systems. To obtain HRWS images, the multi-channel SAR (MC-SAR) system has been employed to tackle the contradictory requirements for both high resolution and low pulse repetition frequency (PRF). Previous interference methods focused on single-channel SAR systems and few research works for MC-SAR systems. In this paper, we first derive a new interference-mitigation model for HRWS SAR systems and conclude that the low-rank property of the NBI is suitable for MC-SAR systems. Then we employ an image-domain sparse regularization to protect the real echoes of the SAR system and mitigate the NBIs by solving the low-rank recovery problems of NBIs. Also, the MC-SAR system errors are further taken into account as a measure for our method’s practical applicability. Finally, the real SAR data is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.