Abstract
Recent advancement of satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques require more sophisticated system configurations such as the use of bistatic antennas or multi-frequencies. A ground-based experiment is a cost-effective and efficient way to evaluate those new configurations especially in the early stage of the system development. In this paper, a ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) system was constructed and operated in a bistatic mode at Ku-band where a receiving antenna (Rx) follows a transmitting antenna (Tx) separated by a baseline B. A new bistatic GB-SAR focusing algorithm was developed by modifying a conventional range-Doppler algorithm (RDA), and its performance has been evaluated by comparing the results with those from a back-projection algorithm (BPA). The results showed good performance of RDA at far range approaching nominal resolutions of 9.4 cm in range and 4.5 cm in azimuth, but limited quality at near range due to the approximation used in RDA. Signals from three trihedral corner reflectors (CR) reduced with increasing B, showing a typical bidirectional scattering behavior of CR. This GB-SAR system will be a testbed for new SAR imaging configurations with variations in antenna positions and target properties.
Highlights
In recent years, technical advancement in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has changed the system configurations from monostatic to bistatic/multistatic modes with multiple antennas [1]
Parabolic signals returned from Bthree corner arethe strong uni-directional backscattering characteristics of the trihedral corner reflectors (CR)
We have constructed a conventional linear-scanning ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) system in the Ku-band and operated in bistatic mode where Rx follows Tx separated by several different baselines
Summary
Technical advancement in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has changed the system configurations from monostatic to bistatic/multistatic modes with multiple antennas [1]. SAR concepts have been widely tested onboard airborne platforms and, for a few cases, with satellites [5]. Such configurations include the use of SAR satellite constellation for multistatic operations or one-stationary and one-moving antenna configurations [6]. For the former configurations, multiple SAR satellites fly on the same (or nearby) orbital plane taking roles of transmitter (Tx) and/or receiver (Rx). By doing so one can enhance the resolution or investigate bidirectional scattering property of targets [7]
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