SUMMARY The conventional image-formation technique of high-resolution SAR synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data has utilized correlation in the range-Doppler domain. An alternative, more recent approach, in the SAR image-formation algorithm exploits downward extrapolation of the wavefield in the f-k domain to perform not only azimuth compression but also simultaneous range-curvature corrections, with improved quality of the final image. In this paper, a new approach to SAR data processing, based on the inverse scattering and the Kirchhoff approximation, is described and tested. The complex backscattering coefficient can also be estimated by this new approach provided the surface scattering is dominant. The final inversion formula is designed to exploit f-k domain computation in an analogous manner to seismic Born inversion. Digital simulations using one- and multiple-point target models are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.