Generalization of spatially variant apodization to noninteger Nyquist sampling rates.

Spatially variant apodization (SVA) is reformulated for use on synthetic aperture radar imagery with an arbitrary sampling rate. The algorithm is implemented as a spatially varying three-point finite impulse response filter, and constraints on the filter parameters are developed from physically motivated concepts. By varying the parameters of the filter, the sidelobe energy is reduced with no effective loss of resolution. The procedure produces an output comparable to that of the integer Nyquist version of SVA, and effectively eliminates sidelobe artifacts with no loss of mainlobe resolution.