An Efficient Rectification Algorithm for Spaceborne SAR Imagery Using Polynomial Model

This paper describes a rectification procedure that relies on a polynomial model derived from the imaging geometry without loss of accuracy. By using polynomial model, one can effectively eliminate the iterative process to find an image pixel corresponding to each output grid point. With the imaging geometry and ephemeris data, a geo-location polynomial can be constructed from grid points that are produced by solving three equations simultaneously. And, in order to correct the local distortions induced by the geometry and terrain height, a distortion model has been incorporated in the procedure, which is a function of incidence angle and height at each pixel position. With this function, it is straightforward to calculate the pixel displacement due to distortions and then pixels are assigned to the output grid by re-sampling the displaced pixels. Most of the necessary information for the construction of polynomial model is available in the leader file and some can be derived from others. For validation, sample images of ERS-l PRI and Radarsat-l SGF have been processed by the proposed method and evaluated against ground truth acquired from 1:25,000 topography maps.