On the TOPS mode spaceborne SAR

TOPS (terrain observation by progressive scans) is a recently proposed SAR mode for wide swath acquisition, which aims at achieving the same coverage and resolution as the SCAN mode besides creating scalloping-free images. In this paper, a general SAR imaging model used in TOPS and other SAR modes is introduced, where the antenna sweep rate, Doppler centroid rate, illumination time and azimuth resolution are described by a parameter defined as the "mode factor". After analyzing the characteristics of TOPS signal, an algorithm based on chirp-z transform is proposed, in which a new de-rotation function is used. Simulation results validate the proposed algorithm.