Phase and amplitude phase restoration in synthetic aperture radar imaging

Methods for addressing two types of multiplicative noise in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging are presented. The authors consider a multiplicative noise with a real phase (i.e., the SAR signal's phase is contaminated but its amplitude is uncorrupted) that possesses unknown functional characteristics with respect to the radar signal's temporal frequencies. A perturbation solution for phase reconstruction from amplitude is developed from a wave equation governing the SAR signal and a Riccati equation that relates the amplitude and phase functions of the SAR signal. This solution is converted into a noniterative analytical solution in terms of the moments and powers of the log amplitude function. Next, the authors consider a multiplicative noise with a complex phase (i.e., both the amplitude and phase of the SAR signal are contaminated) that varies linearly with respect to the radar signal's temporal frequencies. The two wave equations governing the SAR signal at two temporal frequencies of the radar signal are combined to derive a method to reconstruct the complex phase error function.