Abstract
High-precision radiometric calibration and synchronization compensation must be provided for distributed radar system due to separate transmitters and receivers. This paper proposes a transponder-aided joint radiometric calibration, motion compensation and synchronization for distributed radar remote sensing. As the transponder signal can be separated from the normal radar returns, it is used to calibrate the distributed radar for radiometry. Meanwhile, the distributed radar motion compensation and synchronization compensation algorithms are presented by utilizing the transponder signals. This method requires no hardware modifications to both the normal radar transmitter and receiver and no change to the operating pulse repetition frequency (PRF). The distributed radar radiometric calibration and synchronization compensation require only one transponder, but the motion compensation requires six transponders because there are six independent variables in the distributed radar geometry. Furthermore, a maximum likelihood method is used to estimate the transponder signal parameters. The proposed methods are verified by simulation results.
Highlights
Distributed radar system operating with separated transmitters and receivers offers many operational advantages [1,2,3,4] to conventional monostatic and multi-frequency or multi-polarized radars [5,6,7,8], like the exploitation of additional information contained in bistatic reflectivity of targets [9], reduced vulnerability [10], and forward-looking imaging [11]
To evaluate the motion compensation method, we performed statistically simulation investigations using the actual global positioning systems (GPS) data obtained from the IGS website
High-precision radiometric calibration, motion and synchronization compensation must be ensured for distributed radar, which operates with separate transmitters and receivers
Summary
Distributed radar system operating with separated transmitters and receivers offers many operational advantages [1,2,3,4] to conventional monostatic and multi-frequency or multi-polarized radars [5,6,7,8], like the exploitation of additional information contained in bistatic reflectivity of targets [9], reduced vulnerability [10], and forward-looking imaging [11]. Distributed radar may offer reduced vulnerability to countermeasures such as jamming, as well as increased slow-moving target detection and identification capability via clutter tuning, in which the receiver maneuvers so that its motion compensates for the motion of the illuminator to create a zero Doppler shift for the area being searched. This could be worthwhile, e.g., for topographic features and drainage, to show the relationships that occur between forest, vegetation, and soils. PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0119174 March 20, 2015
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