Virtual multichannel SAR for ground moving target imaging

• Published in: IET radar, sonar & navigation sonar & navigation, 2016-01, Vol.10 (1), p.50-62
• Main Authors: Bacci, Alessio, Martorella, Marco, Gray, Douglas Andrew, Gelli, Samuele, Berizzi, Fabrizio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: backscatter; backscattered signal; Backscattering; Clutter; ground clutter mitigation; ground moving targets imaging; Grounds; interference suppression; Moving targets; Multichannel; M‐SAR system; Navigation; object detection; PRF single channel SAR system; pulse repetition frequency; radar clutter; radar detection; radar imaging; slow moving ground target; slow time processing; Sonar; space time processing; spatial degrees of freedom; Special Issue: Catching the Invisible; Synthetic aperture radar; synthetic aperture radar image; target detection; virtual multichannel SAR
• ISSN: 1751-8784; 1751-8792; 1751-8792
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-rsn.2015.0128

Slow moving ground targets are invisible within synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images since they appear defocused and their backscattered signal completely overlap the focused ground return. In order for this targets to be detected and refocused the availability of some spatial degrees of freedom is required. This allows for space/slow time processing to be applied to mitigate the ground clutter. However, multichannel SAR (M-SAR) systems are very expensive and the requirements in terms of baseline length can be very restrictive. In this study a processing scheme that exploits high PRF single channel SAR system to emulate a multichannel SAR is presented. The signal model for both target and clutter components are presented and the difference with respect to an actual M-SAR are highlighted. The effectiveness of the proposed processing is then demonstrated on simulated a measured dataset.