Preliminary Research of Low-RCS Moving Target Detection Based on Ka-Band Video SAR

Abstract

Conventional synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ground moving target detection is only effective for targets with high radar cross section (RCS), and its performance is degraded by focusing distortion caused by the motion of the target. This letter proposes a new low-RCS moving target detection method which exploits the target’s shadow using high-resolution sequential images captured by a Ka-band video SAR system. First, the characteristics of target shadow are investigated, which are mainly influenced by the size of the target, the incidence of the radar beam, and the target velocity. Then the presented method based on video SAR system is described, and its moving target detection performance is also analyzed. As a preliminary study, a simulated experiment is conducted in which the signal of a low-RCS moving target is simulated and inserted into real airborne Ka-band video SAR images. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method for low-RCS moving target detection.