High Resolution 3D Imaging with Synthetic Aperture Radar Systems

Abstract

High resolution imaging is critical for many applications such as autonomous driving, air traffic control, air defense systems and antimissile systems. Such imaging heavily relies on radars for object detection. However, the resolution for conventional radars are very limited. An effective approach is to use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, where a single beam-forming antenna is mounted on a moving platform, from which a target scene is repeatedly illuminated with pulses of radio waves at different wavelengths. The reflected waves are then used to detect the location of the targets. In this paper, we present a novel method of using SAR-based radars for high-resolution object detection. We use a receiving antenna with multiple observation points together with a stationary transmitting antenna. We then use computer-aided data processing to get the image of the target. The imaging system is able to detect the location of multiple targets with exceptional high resolution. The theoretical and experimental study proves that, with this technique, the detection of multiple targets in close proximity of each other can be effectively done.