Phase-coded Waveform Optimization of Spaceborne Sliding Spotlight SAR with Low Sidelobe

Spaceborne sliding spotlight synthetic aperture radar (3S-SAR) has achieved long-duration and high-resolution observations of targets, playing a vital role in remote sensing. However, strong scattering targets in SAR imagery exhibit high two-dimensional sidelobes, which would degrade image quality and obscure critical targets. To address this issue, we propose a phase-coded waveform optimization of 3S-SAR with low sidelobe. Firstly, we establish that the SAR imagery sidelobes are equivalent to the autocorrelation sidelobes. Next, we formulate the waveform optimization as a minimization problem aimed at reducing the discrete integrated autocorrelation sidelobe. Finally, we apply the majorization-minimization method to solve this optimization. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.