Terrain mapping by ground-based interferometric radar

Abstract

The authors propose a ground-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique for terrain mapping. It is based on a coherent continuous-wave step-frequency (CW-SF) radar moved along a linear horizontal rail. It works synthesising microwave holographic images taken from different points of view to obtain elevation maps by phase comparison. The focusing algorithm for imaging synthetic holograms and digital elevation models (DEM) is able to correct topographic distortion and phase wrap through an iterative multi-baseline procedure.