Doppler Centroid Research Articles

A Computationally Efficient Airborne Forward-Looking Super-Resolution Imaging Method Based on Sparse Bayesian Learning

In airborne forward-looking imaging, the azimuth resolution and the imaging efficiency are important. In this paper, we propose a low-dimension sparse Bayesian learning with Doppler compensation (LDSBL-DC) method to improve the azimuth resolution with a low computational complexity in airborne forward-looking imaging. First, since the variant pitching angle causes the space-variant of the Doppler centroid, the Doppler convolution matrix needs to be constructed in each range cell. We construct a Doppler compensation matrix to eliminate the space-variant of the Doppler centroid. After the Doppler centroid compensation, the Doppler convolution matrix only needs to be constructed once. Second, we propose a low-dimensional projection model based on the singular value decomposition. In the low-dimensional projection model, the high-dimension echo data is compressed to low-dimension data. Finally, combining Doppler centroid compensation and low-dimensional projection model, a new forward-looking imaging model is created, and we introduce sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) to estimate the imaging parameters. In the estimation of the targets’ scattering coefficient, we reduce the computational complexity by the matrix transformation. Several simulations are designed to evaluate the performance of the efficient forward-looking imaging method. The simulation results show the LDSBL-DC method can improve the azimuth resolution with a low computational complexity.

Phase Bias Estimation and Imaging for High-Squint Multichannel SAR in Azimuth

High-squint multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in azimuth can overcome the constraint of minimum antenna area in the traditional single-channel classical SAR system, and thereby it would be much more flexible to achieve high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) imaging than broadside SAR. However, for the high-squint multichannel SAR imaging mode, the squint angle causes Doppler centroid varying with the range frequency, which can further result in much more complicated problem of the spectral folding after down-sampled with low PRF. Meanwhile, the Doppler centroid frequency is indispensable for the estimation of phase bias and unambiguous signal reconstruction among received channels. In this paper, the impact of high-squint angle on the aliased Doppler spectrum and Doppler centroid is analyzed in detail. Then, a novel approach to phase bias estimation as well as the underlying signal processing in the case of high-squint multichannel SAR imaging mode in azimuth is proposed. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed processing flowchart for high-squint multichannel SAR.

A Platform Errors Estimation Method Based on Radar Echo for Spaceborne Doppler Scatterometer

The Doppler scatterometer is a type of rotating radar platform used for the estimation and monitoring of ocean current to achieve fast mapping of global vector current with a monostatic system. Accurate measurement of the ocean surface current imposes strong requirements on the accuracy of the platform errors. If the ocean surface current speed measurement accuracy can be less than 5 cm/s, the slant range error should be smaller than 20 m and the attitude measurement error should reach 1×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> °. No available attitude determination technique is capable of this level of accuracy. In this study, we propose a method of platform errors estimation based on echo signals. A model describing the relation of the Doppler centroid to platform errors is established. Then, a Doppler centroid frequency estimation method based on deramping is proposed to improve the estimation accuracy, which showed a 26.15% improvement compared with the classical average cross-correlation coefficient (ACCC) method. Finally, using the weighted least square technique, the platform errors estimation method based on Doppler centroid estimation of echo signals from the stationary land area is constructed. Simulation experiments were performed to analyze the accuracy, feasibility, and robustness of the proposed method. Through simulation of one circle echo data, the root-mean-square errors of slant range error, roll, pitch, and yaw were shown to reach 1.12×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> m, 1.69×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-6</sup> °, 2.44×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-6</sup> °, and 8.52×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-7</sup> °, respectively. These findings represent a much smaller error level than the requirement for the slant range error and attitude angles.

A Joint Parameters Estimation Method for Azimuth Multichannel TOPS SAR

Multi-channel parameter estimation is a key technology for azimuth multi-channel terrain observation by progressive scans synthetic aperture radar (MC TOPS SAR) systems. Normally, for the traditional multichannel parameter estimation algorithms, the mismatch parameters are concluded as phase error, baseline error, and Doppler centroid. The beam rotation speed error is ignored. However, for MC TOPS SAR, beam rotation speed error will degrade the reconstruction performance of the Doppler spectrum. Moreover, only part of the mismatch parameters can be estimated for the traditional algorithms. To address those problems, a joint parameters estimation algorithm for TOPS SAR based on spatial time cross-correlation coefficient (STCCC) is proposed. Combined with phase wrapping and the least-squares method (LSM), the algorithm is capable of realizing a joint parameters estimation of channel consistency error, azimuth baseline error, Doppler centroid frequency, and beam rotation speed estimation without iteration. The real data processing result shows that the method can effectively realize MC TOPS SAR data error estimation.

A Robust Method for Block Adjustment of UAV SAR Images

To reduce the number of ground control points required for block adjustment of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, a robust block adjustment method is pro-posed. The proposed method aims to solve the problem of unstable adjustment solutions caused by the jittering of UAV SAR platforms. This method is based on the range Doppler model. By analyzing the correlation between the antenna phase center, velocity, and Doppler centroid of the seven orientation parameters, this method performs a block adjustment of UAV SAR images with three orientation parameters: the antenna phase center initial imaging moment, Doppler centroid, and proximity delay. UAV SAR images obtained from an area of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 3 km in Dengfeng were used to conduct adjustment experiments. The results obtained using different orientation parameter set-tings verify the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed method. The adjustment results under various control-point layout plans indicate that a uniform layout plan can achieve an adjustment accuracy better than 1 m with a small number of control points.

Bistatic SAR Maritime Ship Target 3-D Image Reconstruction Method Without Distortion in Local Cartesian Coordinate

Bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) has been attracting worldwide attention because of its forward-looking imaging and high anti-interference. In harsh environment, it is vital for BiSAR to conduct extensive surveillance, imaging, and recognition of maritime ship targets. However, under the disturbance of sea waves, the ship target has an unknown and massive three-dimensional (3-D) rotation, so that its imaging projection plane (IPP) is also undetermined. Thus, high-dimensional random distortion appears in imaging results, making it difficult to recognize the target through two-dimensional distorted images effectively. To solve these problems, bistatic SAR maritime ship target 3-D image reconstruction method without distortion in local Cartesian coordinate (LCC) is proposed. In this paper, according to positions of scatterers and rotation parameters, significant differences of different scatterers of maritime ship targets have been found in bistatic range, Doppler centroid (DC), and Doppler frequency rate (DFR), which lays a solid foundation for the scatterer separation of ship targets. On this basis, a 3-D R-DC-DFR domain is constructed, and 2-D echoes of the maritime ship target are projected into R-DC-DFR domain to separate scatterers. Then, by remapping data of transmitter and receiver in R-DC-DFR domain to LCC, as well as evaluating their similarity metric, the optimal rotation parameters of the ship target can be obtained via the maximal similarity. Therefore, the image distortion caused by the unknown IPP has been removed, and 3-D image reconstruction of ship targets can be realized without distortion in the LCC. Furthermore, to evaluate performances of 3-D image reconstruction for different rotation parameters and bistatic configurations, 3-D reconstruction index is proposed and analyzed. Both point-targets and maritime ship targets are simulated to emphasize the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Zero Doppler centroid steering during operation of space synthetic aperture radars

Zero Doppler centroid steering during operation of space synthetic aperture radars

Guided Unsupervised Learning by Subaperture Decomposition for Ocean SAR Image Retrieval

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can provide accurate images of the ocean surface roughness day-or-night in nearly all weather conditions, being an unique asset for many geophysical applications. Considering the huge amount of data daily acquired by satellites, automated techniques for physical features extraction are needed. Even if supervised deep learning methods attain state-of-the-art results, they require a great amount of labelled data, which are difficult and excessively expensive to acquire for ocean SAR imagery. To this end, we use the subaperture decomposition (SD) algorithm to enhance the unsupervised learning retrieval on the ocean surface, empowering ocean researchers to search into large ocean databases. We empirically prove that SD improves the retrieval precision with over 20% for an unsupervised transformer auto-encoder network. Moreover, we show that SD brings an important performance boost when Doppler centroid images are used as input data, leading the way to new unsupervised physics guided retrieval algorithms.

High Frame-Rate and Low-Latency Video SAR Based on Robust Doppler Parameters Estimation in the Terahertz Regime

Video synthetic aperture radar (ViSAR) operating at low-frequencies generally suffers from low frame-rate and high latency due to its wide synthetic aperture and long dwell time. To conquer the problems mentioned above, this article proposes a ViSAR imaging processing framework based on the terahertz (THz) regime. The proposed method only needs a data repetition ratio of 0% rather than 80% for the microwave to reach the 0.2m imaging resolution and 5Hz frame rate with low latency thanks to the designed high pulse repetition frequency (PRF) system and short wavelength of THz wave. Thus, robust estimations of baseband Doppler centroid and Doppler rate are proposed based on the multi-core adaptive weighting and imaging knowledge prior, which handles the Doppler sensitivity of the THz regime effectively. Finally, airborne experiments are carried out to validate the superiority of dynamic situational awareness and the potential of moving targets indication in the THz-ViSAR.

Comparison of Doppler-Derived Sea Ice Radial Surface Velocity Measurement Methods From Sentinel-1A IW Data

The near-instantaneous radial velocity of a target can be obtained using the Doppler effect of SAR, which is widely used in ocean current retrieval. However, in sea ice drift velocity measurements, only a Doppler centroid estimation algorithm in frequency domain has been studied, so whether there is a better algorithm is worth exploring. In this study, based on Sentinel-1A IW data, three Doppler centroid estimation algorithms applied to ocean current retrieval are selected. Combined with the characteristics of the TOPS mode, made two applicability adjustments to each algorithm, and finally applied the three algorithms to sea ice radial surface velocity measurements. The first adjustment is to explore and determine the optimal parameters. The second adjustment is to use parallel computing to improve the efficiency, which is improved by an average of 43.55%. In addition, the deviation of Doppler centroid estimation bias correction is verified using rainforest data, and the deviation is controlled at approximately 3 Hz. Based on the three algorithms, five sets of experiments are carried out in this study. By analyzing and comparing the results of each algorithm, it is found that the results of the three algorithms are relatively consistent, among which the correlation Doppler estimation algorithm has the advantages of high efficiency and high precision and is the most suitable method for sea ice drift measurement among the three methods. However, for SAR images with abnormal speckles caused by human activities, the sign Doppler estimation algorithm can effectively remove abnormal speckles and ensure the smoothness of the image with better adaptability.

Retrieval of a Real‐Time Sea Surface Vector Field From SAR Doppler Centroid: 1. Ekman Current Retrieval

AbstractCurrent direction retrieval is a significant part of the Doppler Centroid Technique (DCT) for remote sensing of the sea surface vector field, and it remains an unsolved problem that has prevented its wide application for more than 15 years. In this paper, we review and update the core concept of the DCT, through which the Ekman scheme for current direction retrieval is obtained. In addition, the real sea surface vector field at approximately 24°N with weak background flow during Hurricane Sam is retrieved. We also prove that the measured velocity of the DCT is just the magnitude of the sea surface current vector, and thus, the DCT is the most promising technique for remote sensing of sea surface current dynamics.

A Novel Imaging Scheme of Squint Multichannel SAR: First Result of GF-3 Satellite

The azimuth multichannel synthetic aperture radar (MC-SAR) is an effective means of earth observation due to its high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) imaging capability. Compared with the traditional MC-SAR, the two-dimensional (2D) spectrum of the squint multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SMC-SAR) is skewed, leading to the severe coupling between azimuth signals and range signals. Therefore, the traditional imaging algorithms are inapplicable to SMC-SAR. Currently, the existing imaging algorithms for SMC-SAR need interpolation or sub-aperture processing, which results in low efficiency. This paper proposes a novel imaging scheme for spaceborne SMC-SAR to handle this issue. With the squint angle known, the Doppler centroid can be compensated for by the spectrum shift function. Additionally, the frequency correlation method (FCM) is utilized to estimate the channel phase imbalance. After that, the azimuth multichannel data are reconstructed by the filter banks to eliminate the Doppler spectrum aliasing. Finally, the data are imaged based on the modified equivalent slant range model (MESRM). Both the simulation and Gaofen-3 (GF-3) data experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.

A Novel Frequency-Domain Focusing Method for Geosynchronous Low-Earth-Orbit Bistatic SAR in Sliding-Spotlight Mode

The low-earth-orbit synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can achieve enhanced remote-sensing capabilities by exploiting the large-scale and long-duration beam coverage of a geosynchronous (GEO) SAR illuminator. Different bistatic imaging modes can be implemented by the steering of an antenna beam onboard the LEO receiver, such as high-resolution sliding-spotlight mode. In this paper, the accurate focusing of GEO-LEO bistatic SAR (GEO-LEO BiSAR) in sliding-spotlight mode is investigated. First, the two major problems of the accurate bistatic range model, i.e., curved trajectory within long integration time and ‘stop-and-go’ assumption error, for sliding-spotlight GEO-LEO BiSAR are analyzed. Then, a novel bistatic range model based on equivalent circular orbit trajectory is proposed to accurately represent the range history of GEO-LEO BiSAR in sliding-spotlight mode. Based on the proposed range model, a frequency-domain imaging method is put forward. First, a modified two-step preprocessing method is implemented to remove the Doppler aliasing caused by azimuth variance of Doppler centroid and beam steering. Then, an azimuth trajectory scaling is formulated to remove the azimuth variance of motion parameters due to curved trajectory. A modified frequency-domain imaging method is derived to eliminate the 2-D spatial variance and achieve accurate focusing of the echo data. Finally, imaging results and analysis on both simulated data and real data from an equivalent BiSAR experiment validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Line Profile Studies of Coronal Active Regions in Fe xii λ195.12 Using Hinode/EIS

Coronal active regions are studied using Hinode/EIS observations in the EUV line Fe xii λ195.12 by analyzing their line profiles from 2006 December to 2019 December. The period covers the last 2 yr of solar cycle 23 and solar cycle 24 fully. Active regions are the main source of magnetic field in the solar atmosphere, important in its heating and dynamics. Line profiles were obtained from various active regions spread across the Sun on a monthly basis from which we obtained the intensity, line width, Doppler velocity, and centroid and examined their variation during the solar cycle. The histograms of the Doppler velocity and centroid show that they behave in six different ways with respect to the position of rest wavelength. In addition, the shifts in the centroid were found to be more compared to the Doppler velocity. The variation of the line width with respect to the Doppler velocity or the centroid mostly follows a second-degree polynomial. A multicomponent line profile is simulated to explain the difference in the behavior of the Doppler velocity and the centroid with respect to the line width. We also find that the intensity and the line width of the different data sets show a global dependence on the solar cycle with a good correlation. The implications of the results for the coronal heating and dynamics are pointed out.

Ka-Band Doppler Scatterometry: A Strong Wind Case Study

Global joint measurements of sea surface winds and currents are planned using satellite-based Doppler scatterometers operating in the Ka-band to achieve improved spatial resolution and retrieval accuracy. Still, the knowledge of sea surface Ka-band backscatter properties is poor, particularly, at high winds (&gt;20 m s−1). Sea surface radar cross-section in the Ka-band, in contrast to that in the lower frequency Ku-/X-/C-/L-bands, is likely more sensitive to sea spray, small-scale particles typically present at high winds. In this paper, tower-based field data collected by a continuous dual-co-polarized Ka-band radar during a strong offshore wind event (with wind speed reaching 33 m s−1) are analyzed. This katabatic wind event (≈12 h long) was also recorded by supplementary wave, wind, and current sensors. At the wave fetch of ≈1 km, the maximum wavelength of observed offshore waves was ≈10 m. For such extremely young wind–sea conditions, an apparent sea spray generation was observed during wind gusts. Radar measurements were performed at 20∘ and 45∘ incidence angles, mostly for cross- and up-wind azimuth look geometry. Based on these high wind measurements, the previously developed Ka-band empirical model is tested and compared with other published geophysical model functions. Dual-co-polarized measurements are used to infer resonant Bragg and non-Bragg scattering components and assess the short wind wave spectrum, which shows a clear tendency for saturation at high winds. The presence of sea spray signatures is apparent in the high-frequency tails of radar Doppler spectra, but their overall contribution to the Doppler centroid frequency is weak. Hence, the standard modulation transfer function approach developed for moderate winds is still applicable at high winds for interpreting the wave-induced Doppler velocity and inferring sea surface currents. These results can also be useful for understanding Doppler scatterometry measurements in tropical cyclones.

A Two-dimensional Attitude Steering Method to Compensate for the Doppler Centroid in Moon-based SAR

The rising attention to Moon-based Earth observation provides a new way to monitor Earth. Among Moon-based detectors, the SAR method has the advantage of long-term, stable, unique observations compared to space-borne SAR. Unlike space-borne SAR, however, the complicated relative motion of a Moon-based sensor makes its Doppler centroid estimation more difficult. This paper proposes a method for two-dimensional attitude steering to compensate for the Doppler centroid of Moon-based SAR. In the periodic movement between Earth and the Moon, the track speed of sites distributed around the near side of the Moon are almost perpendicular to vectors from the sites to the Earth centroid. This situation indicates the feasibility of attitude steering to guide antennas into a zero Doppler plane intersecting Earth’s surface. Therefore, this paper proposes a method for two-dimensional attitude steering to compensate the Doppler centroid to zero. In this method, the Moon is no longer deemed as a point but a natural celestial body with an average radius. Sites distributed around the hemisphere of the near side are also considered separately because of differences in spatial position and speed. Through the proposed method, the pointing of SAR antennas will be steered to a place on Earth where the Doppler centroid is compensated to zero. The JPL DE430 and EOP data are closer to reality and are used for accurate simulation. In this paper, the twodimensional attitude steering method is compared with no attitude steering and a onedimensional attitude steering method, and the results show its effectiveness.

Doppler Centroid Estimation for Ground Moving Target in Multichannel HRWS SAR System

In multichannel high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ground moving target indication (GMTI) systems, Doppler centroid (DC) is an essential parameter for spectrum reconstruction and image focusing. However, the conventional DC estimator faces many problems in moving target with multichannel SAR system, such as nonuniform data in azimuth, subsignal usage, and channel mismatch. To estimate the DC of moving target, the modified cross-correlation coefficient (MCCC) method for multichannel SAR system is proposed in this letter, which is especially suitable for nonuniform and undersampled data. Simulations with real spaceborne data demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.

Direct Comparison of Sea Surface Velocity Estimated From Sentinel-1 and TanDEM-X SAR Data

This article presents the first direct comparison of the sea surface radial velocity (RVL) derived from the two satellite SAR systems Sentinel-1 and TanDEM-X, operating at different frequencies and imaging modes. The RVL is derived from the Doppler centroid (Dc) provided in the Sentinel-1 OCN product and from the along-track interferometric phase of the TanDEM-X. The comparison is carried out using unique opportunistic acquisitions, collocated in space and time, over three different sites located in the Iceland Sea, the Pentland Firth, and the Kattegat Sea. First, it is observed that the RVL derived from both satellites is biased, thus calibration is applied using the land as a reference. The comparison shows that the correlation and the mean bias between the two datasets depend on the differences in acquisition time, incidence angle, and azimuth angle, and on wind and surface velocities. It is found that, given a time difference of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\lesssim$</tex-math></inline-formula> 20 min, the spatial correlation coefficient is relatively high (between 0.70 and 0.93), which indicates that the two SAR systems observe similar sea surface current fields. The spatial correlation degrades primarily due to increasing time difference and decreasing velocity magnitudes. It is also found that the mean RVL bias increases primarily with the radial wind speed, which suggests that the bias is mainly due to the wave-induced Doppler shift. This article shows that under certain conditions, i.e., similar acquisition geometry and short time delay, a good agreement between the two independently derived RVL is achieved, both in the spatial variation and absolute mean value. This encourages a synergistic use of the sea surface velocity estimated from different C- and X-band SAR systems.

Coastline Extraction From SAR Data Using Doppler Centroid Images

Coastline extraction by exploiting optical images is challenging during adverse weather conditions. This letter proposes coastline extraction from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. Since collecting <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in-situ</i> data is expensive and not always possible, the Doppler parameter is used to delineate coastlines when neither <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in-situ</i> data nor cloud-free optical images are available. We propose a novel coastline extraction method based on classic coastal dynamic variation, such as Doppler centroid ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f_DC</i> ), since coastline is static and has zero Doppler with respect to the dynamic sea-state. The results of the Doppler-based novel technique allow us to investigate the impact of natural hazards on coastline degradation. We compare the proposed method to state-of-the-art (SOA) coastline extraction methods based on polarimetric correlations and the reference method from Sentinel-2. The results show that using scattering from dual and cross-polarization for coastline extraction is more reliable than using co-polarization. Based on empirical distributions and using the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) method, the relevant threshold has been adapted to distinguish land and sea in an unsupervised manner. We compare the results of polarimetric and Sentinel-2 with Doppler-based coastline extraction, which emphasizes the accuracy of the proposed <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f_DC</i> method for extracting coastlines at full resolution.

2-D Spatially Variant Motion Error Compensation for High-Resolution Airborne SAR Based on Range-Doppler Expansion Approach

Motion errors are inevitable in real-world scenarios and introduce significant phase errors in airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. Generally, these errors consist of the cross-coupling and spatially variant components. Cross-coupling errors can usually be eliminated by motion compensation (MoCo), whereas the latter are seldom addressed, which deteriorate the imaging qualities, especially for the high-resolution cases. To solve the problem, a novel approach based on 2-D range-Doppler expansion is proposed. First, an accurate range equation of the aircraft is obtained based on the inertial navigation system (INS) data. Then, the range-Doppler expansion corresponding to the slant range and Doppler centroid are performed, by which the echo signal is decoupled into two spatially variant parts in range and azimuth directions. Finally, the chirp-z transforms (CZTs) are employed to remove the range and azimuth spatial variations introduced, respectively, by the cross-track and along-track errors. Different from the conventional methods, our approach can greatly decrease the cross-coupling and spatially variant effects brought by motion errors in high-resolution cases. Computer simulation and real data experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.