A Novel Algorithm for Stitching Doppler Beam Sharpening Images Based on INS Information

By stitching Doppler Beam Sharpening (DBS) images together, a wide swath ground image is obtained. In practice, however, there are some difficulties in stitching due to the nonideal movement (variation of the velocity vector and the attitude) of the radar platform. To deal with these problems, a novel method is proposed, which can stitch the DBS images effectively. The Interial Navigation System (INS) information is employed to estimate the instantaneous position of the aircraft and the radar beam direction, both of which are then transformed to the original reference coordinate so that the corrected parameters of the image can be obtained. Finally, by using these parameters, the image stitiching is achieved. Processing results of measured data show that the proposed method not only compensates the motion error excellently, but also significantly outperforms the traditional algorithm in stitching performance.