Low-frequency Ultra-wideband Synthetic Aperture Radar Research Articles

Monostatic and Bistatic Low Frequency Ultrawideband SAR Imaging Experiment

Low frequency ultrawideband (LF UWB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has lately become of a particular interest to SAR community. Monostatic and bistatic LF UWB SAR system has the well foliage penetrating capability, high-resolution imaging and providing the increased information. In 2015, a monostatic and bistatic LF UWB SAR imaging experiment was conducted. In this experiment, the monostatic and bistatic data were collected simultaneously by operating a moving vehicle-based radar in the SAR mode, in conjunction with a stationary ground-based receiver. The aim was to investigate the imaging property of the bistatic LF UWB SAR system. The one pulse per second (1 PPS) signal in combination with the global position system (GPS) disciplined 100 MHz oscillator from the GPS receivers was used to implement the time and frequency synchronization in this SAR system. The bistatic SAR image was obtained by the subaperture spectrum-equilibrium method integrated with the fast factorized back projection (FFBP) algorithm. Bistatic experiment results are show to prove the validity of the bistatic LF UWB SAR imaging experiment.

Spatial resolution analysis of low frequency ultrawidebeam–ultrawideband synthetic aperture radar based on wavenumber domain support of echo data

Compared with the traditional narrowbeam–narrowband (NB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR), the large fractional signal bandwidth and wide azimuth beamwidth of the low frequency (LF) ultrawidebeam–ultrawideband (UWB) SAR induce serious coupling between the azimuth and range wave numbers of the echo data, which might influence the behavior of the spatial resolution in the SAR imaging. The spatial resolution considering the system wave number coupling and radar squint angle for the LF UWB SAR system is proposed based on the wave number domain support (WDS) of the echo data. First, the SAR imaging geometry is built and then the spatial wave number of the echo data for the LF UWB SAR is analyzed. Second, based on the WDS of the echo data, the spatial resolution of the LF UWB SAR is derived. Moreover, the narrowing/broadening factor defined as the ratio of the proposed spatial resolution to the traditional spatial resolution is presented, which indicates the effects of the fractional bandwidth and associated integration angle as well as the squint angle on the spatial resolution. Finally, simulation results are given to prove the correctness of the theory analysis and validity of the proposed spatial resolution.

Performance Evaluation of Frequency-Domain Algorithms for Chirped Low Frequency UWB SAR Data Processing

This paper studies the performance of the frequency-domain algorithms (FDAs) for low-frequency ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar (UWB SAR) data processing. First, a generalized theoretical derivation of the FDAs is presented from the viewpoint of SAR signal processing. The derivation not only provides a deeper understanding to the imaging principle of the extended Omega-K algorithm (EOKA), but also makes it compatible and comparable with the other FDAs. Second, the performance comparison on different FDAs is made based on theoretical analysis, simulation and experimental data. The comparison results show that the Omega-K algorithm (ωKA) has the highest imaging precision in the ideal case (i.e, no motion error), but its application is limited by the poor ability of compensating motion errors. In contrast, the EOKA and nonlinear chirp scaling algorithm (NCSA) have excellent performance on dealing with the motion error, but they can only be applied under specific preconditions. Besides, as cetner frequency gets lower, the fractional bandwidth and integration angle get larger, the imaging precision of NCSA greatly decreases, while the ωKA and EOKA still keep high precision.

SPARSE TIME-FREQUENCY REPRESENTATION BASED FEATURE EXTRACTION METHOD FOR LANDMINE DISCRIMINATION

Low-frequency ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar is a promising technology for landmine detection. According to the scattering characteristics of body-of-revolution (BOR) along with azimuth angles, a discriminator based on Bayesian decision rule is proposed, which uses sequential features, i.e., double-hump distance. First, the algorithm estimates the target scatterings in all azimuth angles based on regions of interest. Second, sequential aspect features are extracted by sparse time-frequency representation. Third, the distributions of features are obtained by training samples, and then the posterior probability of landmine class is computed as an input to the classifler adopting Mahalanobis distance. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is efiective in BOR target discrimination.

Low-frequency ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar ground moving target imaging

A method for low-frequency ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging of ground moving targets is proposed in this study. This method can deal with large range migration of the moving target. A first-order keystone transform is used to correct range walk (first-order range migration), and range curvature (second-order range migration) is compensated by using a second-order keystone transform. Both the first-order and second-order keystone transform parameters are independent of the motion parameters, so that this method can correct the range migration for all targets without knowing their velocity. The advantage of this method is that it can correct range curvature for all targets in one processing step, so that it is simple to implement. Simulation and experimental SAR data processing results are shown to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.