Chirp pulse envelope evaluation for SAR image formation

In this paper, a number of pulse envelopes in a spotlight SAR simulation environment are tested. The simulation environment generates SAR phase history data from digital imagery so that the resulting SAR image formed from the phase history may be compared to the original with traditional image processing metrics such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structured similarity index (SSIM). The results of this study show that a raised cosine envelope with rolloff factor β = 0.1 provides imagery of the best quality of the different envelopes tested, and provides an average of 1.06 dB gain in PSNR and 0.036 gain in SSIM when compared to a pulse with a rectangular envelope applied.