An Image Formation Algorithm for Cooperative Forward Looking SAR of Manned Aerial Vehicle and UAV with Acceleration

Abstract

Cooperative detection with manned/unmanned aerial vehicles has become a new and promising combat mode with its two-dimensional (2D) and high-resolution imaging advantage of bistatic forward looking. Compared with the traditional synthetic aperture radar (SAR), there exists difference of motion velocity between manned aerial vehicle acted as transmitter and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) acted as receiver in this configuration. In addition, there usually exists acceleration during the UAV movement owing to its rapid response and good maneuverability. Such features result in imaging processing more complicated space-variance property in this special configuration. In this paper, cooperative bistatic forward looking SAR imaging of manned aerial vehicle and UAV with acceleration is studied. A novel phase space-variance correction method for this imaging mode is developed with numerical computation, which effectively improves imaging focus performance on targets.