# From Spaceborne to Airborne: SAR Image Synthesis Using Foundation Models for Multi-Scale Adaptation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03844 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03844/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 6 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Quantitative Comparison of Fine-Tuning Techniques for Pretrained Latent Diffusion Models in the Generation of Unseen SAR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13307/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The availability of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery has increased considerably in recent years, with datasets commercially available. However, the acquisition of high-resolution SAR images in airborne configurations, remains costly and limited. Thus, the lack of open source, well-labeled, or easily exploitable SAR text-image datasets is a barrier to the use of existing foundation models in remote sensing applications. In this context, synthetic image generation is a promising solution to augment this scarce data, enabling a broader range of applications. Leveraging over 15 years of ONERA's extensive archival airborn data from acquisition campaigns, we created a comprehensive training dataset of 110 thousands SAR images to exploit a 3.5 billion parameters pre-trained latent diffusion model citeBaqu2019SethiR. In this work, we present a novel approach utilizing spatial conditioning techniques within a foundation model to transform satellite SAR imagery into airborne SAR representations. Additionally, we demonstrate that our pipeline is effective for bridging the realism of simulated images generated by ONERA's physics-based simulator EMPRISE citeempriseemaiimages. Our method explores a key application of AI in advancing SAR imaging technology. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to introduce this approach in the literature.