Research of influence of ADC bit depth on synthetic aperture radar imaging

Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) are an integral part of modern spaceborne remote sensing. They allow for terrain mapping (imaging) regardless of weather conditions. Modern SARs use digital signal processing technologies; therefore the reflected analog signal from the output of the receiving device must be discretized in time and quantized by levels. Moreover, the number of quantization levels is determined by the ADC bit depth, and due to the fact that the signal quantization process is lossy, it is important to understand how this process affects signal losses (errors) and, as a consequence, the quality of the radar image.