Concept of operation and preliminary experimental results of the DRDC through-wall SAR system

Abstract

Mapping the interior of buildings is of great interest to military forces operating in an urban battlefield. Throughwall radars have the potential of mapping interior room layout, including the location of walls, doors and furniture. They could provide information on the in-wall structure, and detect objects of interest concealed in buildings, such as persons and arms caches. We are proposing to provide further context to the end user by fusing the radar data with LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) images of the building exterior. In this paper, we present our system concept of operation, which involves a vehicle driven along a path in front of a building of interest. The vehicle is equipped with both radar and LIDAR systems, as well as a motion compensation unit. We describe our ultra wideband through-wall L-band radar system which uses stretch processing techniques to obtain high range resolution, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques to achieve good azimuth resolution. We demonstrate its current 2-D capabilities with experimental data, and discuss the current progress in using array processing in elevation to provide a 3-D image. Finally, we show preliminary data fusion of SAR and LIDAR data.