Sub-band processing for grating lobe disambiguation in sparse arrays

Abstract

Combined synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indication (GMTI) radar modes simultaneously generate SAR and GMTI products from the same radar data. This hybrid mode provides the benefit of combined imaging and moving target displays as well as improved target recognition. However, the differing system, antenna, and waveform requirements between SAR and GMTI modes make implementing the hybrid mode challenging. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Gotcha radar has collected wide-bandwidth, multi-channel data that can be used for both SAR and GMTI applications. The spatial channels on the Gotcha array are sparsely separated, which causes spatial grating lobes during the digital beamforming process. Grating lobes have little impact on SAR, which typically uses a single spatial channel. However, grating lobes have a large impact on GMTI, where spatial channels are used to mitigate clutter and estimate the target angle of arrival (AOA). The AOA ambiguity has a significant impact in the Gotcha data, where detections from the sidelobes and skirts of the mainlobe wrap back into the main scene causing a significant number of false alarms. This paper presents a sub-banding method to disambiguate grating lobes in the GMTI processing. This method divides the wideband SAR data into multiple frequency sub-bands. Since each sub-band has a different center frequency, the grating lobes for each sub-band appear at different angles. The method uses this variation to disambiguate target returns and places them at the correct angle of arrival (AOA). Results are presented using AFRL Gotcha radar data.