Abstract
The paper proposes an analytical study regarding airborne radar imaging performances and accounts for a down-looking radar system moving along parallel lines far, in terms of probing wavelength, from the investigated domain and collecting multi-frequency and multi-monostatic data. The imaging problem is formulated in a constant depth plane by exploiting the Born approximation. Hence, a linear inverse scattering problem is faced by considering both the Adjoint and the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition reconstruction schemes. Analytical and simulated results are provided to state how the achievable performances depend on the measurement configuration. These results are of practical usefulness because, in operative conditions, it is unfeasible to plan a flight grid made up by a high number of closely (in terms of probing wavelength) spaced lines. Hence, the understanding of how the availability of under-sampled data affects the radar imaging allows for a trade-off between operative data collection constrains and reliable reconstructions of the scenario under test.
Highlights
Radar systems mounted on airborne platforms like small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are worth being considered because UAV allows for a not trivial simplification of the measurement logistic phase
The performance of UAV radar imaging systems depends on multiple system factors, i.e., radar operative parameters, measurement setup and data processing strategy
The paper has presented an analytical and numerical study aimed at assessing the reconstruction capabilities of down looking airborne radar systems able to collect multi-frequency data
Summary
Radar systems mounted on airborne platforms like small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are worth being considered because UAV allows for a not trivial simplification of the measurement logistic phase. A contribution to this topic has been given in [11], where analytical and numerical results have been presented for the case of single frequency, multi-lines, multi-monostatic data. In [11] a radar moving along parallel lines at a certain altitude and collecting single frequency data at nadir has been considered. The same measurement configuration and assumptions of [11] are made but, differently from [11], multi-frequency data are exploited. Numerical results, referred to a wide-band high frequency radar system, are presented to show the benefits introduced by the availability of multi-frequency data and to compare the performance of the two considered inversion approaches.
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