Abstract
The present manuscript faces the problem of performing high-resolution Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) radar imaging in sounder modality, i.e., into the vertical plane defined by the along-tack and the nadir directions. Data are collected by means of a light and compact UAV radar prototype; flight trajectory information is provided by two positioning estimation techniques: standalone Global Positioning System (GPS) and Carrier based Differential Global Positioning System (CDGPS). The radar imaging is formulated as a linear inverse scattering problem and a motion compensation (MoCo) procedure, accounting for GPS or CDGPS positioning, is adopted. The implementation of the imaging scheme, which is based on the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition, is made efficient by the Shift and Zoom approach. Two independent flight tests involving different kind of targets are considered to test the imaging strategy. The results show that the CDGPS supports suitable imaging performance in all the considered test cases. On the other hand, satisfactory performance is also possible by using standalone GPS when the meter-level positioning error exhibits small variations during the radar integration time.
Highlights
Radar imaging by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms [1,2] is worth attention in the remote sensing community as a cost-effective solution to cover wide and/or not accessible regions, with high operative flexibility [3]
The present manuscript faces the problem of performing high-resolution Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) radar imaging in sounder modality, i.e., into the vertical plane defined by the along-tack and the nadir directions
Experimental tests aim at verifying and comparing the radar imaging performance when UAV positioning data are provided by Global Positioning System (GPS) or Carrier based Differential Global Positioning System (CDGPS)
Summary
Radar imaging by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms [1,2] is worth attention in the remote sensing community as a cost-effective solution to cover wide and/or not accessible regions, with high operative flexibility [3]. Multicopter-UAVs (M-UAV) have vertical lift capability, allow take-off and landing from very small areas, without the need of long runways or dedicated launch and recovery systems, and, they are able to hover and move in any directions These peculiar features allow their use at any places and under different flight modes, introducing new attractive possibilities in radar remote sensing [4]. M-UAVs have been exploited to perform Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), for monitoring small areas and avoiding large platforms. In this context, a first experimentation concerning interferometric P and X band SAR sensors on board a UAV platform has been reported in [10]; a novel UAV polarimetric SAR system [11] and a multiband drone-borne SAR system [12] have been recently proposed. UAVs have been exploited in the frame of subsoil exploration by means of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) for mine detection [13,14,15,16], soil moisture mapping [17], and detecting subsurface Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) [18]
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