Multichannel Synthetic Aperture Radar Research Articles

A Multichannel, Multipulse, Multiweight Block-Adaptive Quantization (3MBAQ) Algorithm Based on Space-Borne Multichannel SAR Doppler Domain A-BAQ

Amid the conflict between the current huge data volumes and the requirement for large-compression-ratio compression in space-borne multichannel SAR, this paper proposes a data compression method that uses the adaptive bit allocation BAQ method in the Doppler domain of space-borne multichannel SAR. Specifically, 3MBAQ, which denotes multichannel, multipulse, multiweight block-adaptive quantization, performs signal reconstruction through a Krieger filter to obtain the Doppler spectrum under azimuthal multichannel and multipulse conditions and then achieves nonuniform bit allocation by using the multiple weight contributions between subband spectra. Furthermore, large-compression-ratio compression can be realized in homogeneous scenarios by using the adaptive bit allocation BAQ method together with the improved bit error control (BEC) algorithm. In this paper, the effectiveness of the 3MBAQ method is verified on GF3 measured data. Moreover, compared to the SQNR and NMSE of the BAQ, A-BAQ, A-BAQ-BEC, MCBAQ-ASQ, and MCBAQ-BEC methods under the same conditions, it is shown that there is an optimal 1.3434 dB improvement in SQNR and a 0.0241 improvement in NMSE using the 3MBAQ algorithm, and the complexity of the algorithm for 3MBAQ is O(N2log(N)), which is within acceptable limits, clearly proving the superiority of the 3MBAQ method.

New Insights into Alternating Transmitting Mode (ATM) for Bistatic Multichannel SAR

New Insights into Alternating Transmitting Mode (ATM) for Bistatic Multichannel SAR

A 2-D Range Ambiguity Suppression Method Based on Blind Source Separation for Multichannel SAR Systems

A 2-D Range Ambiguity Suppression Method Based on Blind Source Separation for Multichannel SAR Systems

On the Localization of Multisource RFI for Multichannel SAR Based on the Time–Frequency-Domain Least L¹-Norm Method

On the Localization of Multisource RFI for Multichannel SAR Based on the Time–Frequency-Domain Least <i>L</i>¹-Norm Method

Research on Anti-Deception Forwarding Interference of Squint Azimuth Multichannel SAR

Research on Anti-Deception Forwarding Interference of Squint Azimuth Multichannel SAR

Target Signal-to-Noise Loss in Multichannel SAR–GMTI Clutter Suppression

Target Signal-to-Noise Loss in Multichannel SAR–GMTI Clutter Suppression

Strong Clutter Suppression Using Spatial and Signal Similarity for Multi-Channel SAR Ground-Moving-Target Indication

This paper presents a new two-stage approach for suppressing strong clutter and detecting moving targets using scatterers’ spatial structure and signal similarity. Compared with the traditional strong clutter suppression methods, the proposed method considers both the spatial similarity and the channel correlation of the scatterers, effectively alleviating the false alarm probability and avoiding the missed detection problem caused via identifying strong moving targets as strong stationary clutter. Additionally, a detector is presented based on the linear degree of the radial velocity interferometric phase (LDRVP) to eliminate false alarms from isolated strong scatter points and the edges of strong scatterers. The experimental results of the X-band radar indicate the presented approach’s lower false alarm probability and superior robustness.

Research on Landslide Detection in SAR Images Based on Multi-channel Change Detection Fusion

The landslides have resulted in the grave loss of human life and economic damage. Currently, emergency investigations predominantly employ manual field investigations and remote sensing interpretation. Traditional methods for assessing landslides are time-consuming and ineffective for widespread and numerous landslides. In response, many scholars have successfully employed optical remote sensing imagery to extract landslides. Nonetheless, landslide regions are typically accompanied by copious rainfall along with inclement weather conditions, such as cloudy or overcast skies, which limits the observation capabilities of optical remote sensing methods. At this juncture, the advantages of SAR systems that can penetrate clouds, rain, and fog, and work around the clock under any weather conditions are highlighted. This paper proposes a framework using multi-channel SAR images to extract landslides. The framework consists of fused multi-channel change detection images and traditional detection methods, resulting in effective landslide detection. The proposed method was verified in an experiment using landslide data triggered by an earthquake in Milin County, Tibet, on November 17, 2017.

MIMO- Multi Channel Synthetic Aperture Radar System with Higher Visibility for Autonomous Vehicles to Identify Mobile and Immobile Objects

MIMO- Multi Channel Synthetic Aperture Radar System with Higher Visibility for Autonomous Vehicles to Identify Mobile and Immobile Objects

The Impact of Antenna Array Calibration Errors on MIMO and Multi-Channel Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging

In radar imaging, any lateral resolution is either attained using antenna arrays or by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) principles. Recently, the combination of both approaches to a multi-channel SAR (MCSAR) has gained increased attention. However, antenna arrays are impaired by unknown calibration errors, particularly phase errors, amplification deviations, mutual coupling, and phase center position deviation of the antenna element. Since, first, established calibration procedures are often non-ideal and, second, the calibration parameters usually vary over time due to aging and changes in temperature, calibration errors distort the measurements during the radar operation. Therefore, current research focuses on finding new practical calibration procedures. However, hardly any research has been conducted to analyze the basic effects which erroneous calibration parameters have on the reconstructed image in MCSAR or MIMO radar. In this work, we analyze the effects of multiple calibration error types on MCSAR and MIMO radar imaging. Both measurement principles lead to periodic error patterns, resulting in deterministic distortions. The derived relations can be used to precisely predict the position and number of ghost targets caused by calibration errors for known measurement setups and targets. For this, no information about the actual calibration errors is required. Furthermore, worst-case distortion levels are provided for different bounded errors allowing rough estimates of the impact of different error types on the image's distortion level. The findings are validated via measurements using a 76 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\,$</tex-math></inline-formula> GHz FMCW MIMO radar.

Multi-Channel Back-Projection Algorithm for mmWave Automotive MIMO SAR Imaging With Doppler-Division Multiplexing

Due to the low-cost and compact size, millimeter-wave radar is gaining increasing attention in automotive applications. Compared with the array imaging technique, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) takes advantage of high resolution, low system complexity, and is an important powerful tool in automotive radar imaging. In this paper, a high-resolution MIMO SAR imaging algorithm is proposed in the framework of Doppler-division multiplexing (DDM), where a novel multi-channel back-projection (BP) approach is presented for coherent multi-channel image integration. In the scheme, the DDM is applied on transmitter and Doppler filtering is employed to separate echoes of different transmitters on one receiver. Then the proposed multi-channel BP algorithm is divided into two parts. The first step corresponds to the BP SAR imaging on each channel, effectively dealing with the problem of near-field and wide-angle focusing. As follows, digital beamforming (DBF) and beampattern synthesis based on alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is used for multi-channel SAR image coherent fusion. Experiments using real-measured data from an automotive radar system with a two-transmitter-eight-receiver array validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Ocean oil spill detection from SAR images based on multi-channel deep learning semantic segmentation

One of the major threats to marine ecosystems is pollution, particularly, that associated with the offshore oil and gas industry. Oil spills occur in the world's oceans every day, either as large-scale spews from drilling-rig or tanker accidents, or as smaller discharges from all sorts of sea-going vessels. In order to contribute to the timely detection and monitoring of oil spills over the oceans, we propose a new Multi-channel Deep Neural Network (M-DNN) segmentation model and a new and effective Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image dataset, that enable us to emit forewarnings in a prompt and reliable manner. Our proposed M-DNN is a pixel-level segmentation model intended to improve previous DNN oil-spill detection models, by taking into account multiple input channels, complex oil shapes at different scales (dimensions) and evolution in time, and look-alikes from low wind speed conditions. Our methodology consists of the following components: 1) New Multi-channel SAR Image Database Development; 2) Multi-Channel DNN Model based on U-net and ResNet; and 3) Multi-channel DNN Training and Transfer Learning. Due to the lack of public oil spill databases guaranteeing a correct learning process of the M-DNN, we developed our own database consisting of 16 ENVISAT-ASAR images acquired over the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout, off the west coast of South Korea during the Hebei Spirit oil tanker collision, and over the Black Sea. These images were pre-processed to create a 3-channel input image IM = {IO, IW, IV}, to feed in and train our M-DNN. The first channel IO represents the radiometric values of the original SAR Images, the second and third channels are derived from IO; in particular, IW represents the output of the wind speed estimation using CMOD5 algorithm (Hersbach et al., 2003) and IV represents the variance of IO that incorporates texture information and at the same time encapsulates oil spill transition regions. IM channels were split and linearly transformed for data augmentation (rotation and reflection) to obtain a total of 80,772 sub-images of 224 × 224 pixels. From the entire database, 80 % of the sub-images were used in the DNN training process, the remaining (20 %) was used for testing our final architecture. Our experimental results show higher pixel-level classification accuracy when 2 or 3 channels are used in the M-DNN, reaching an accuracy of 98.56 % (the highest score reported in the literature for DNN models). Additionally, our M-DNN model provides fast training convergence rate (about 14 times better on the average than previous works), which proves the effectiveness of our proposed method. According to our knowledge, our work is the first multi-channel DNN based scheme for the classification of oil spills at different scales.

Sparsity-Based Joint Array Calibration and Ambiguity Resolving for Forward-Looking Multi-Channel SAR Imagery

Forward-looking multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (FLMC-SAR) can realize two-dimension image formation in monostatic mode. This system must face the problem of left–right Doppler ambiguity. In the traditional methods, the spatial degrees of freedom of the FLMC-SAR system is expected to achieve Doppler ambiguity resolving by beamforming approaches. However, the influence of array error on beamforming cannot be ignored. In practice, the array error will lead to the mismatch of the space–time characteristic, which will reduce the performance of the Doppler ambiguity resolving method based on beamforming. This paper proposes a sparsity-based joint array calibration and ambiguity resolving method to enhance the robustness of FLMC-SAR imagery. For the FLMC-SAR system, the space–time characteristic of targets is first analyzed, based on which the observation model of FLMC-SAR Doppler ambiguity combined with array error is derived. Then, the Doppler ambiguity resolving and array error estimation are transformed into a sparse recovery problem. A modified quasi-Newton method is proposed to realize the array error estimation and Doppler ambiguity resolving of all targets in the local area. Finally, the results of the simulation and the real-data experiments verify that the proposed method can achieve FLMC-SAR Doppler ambiguity resolving and imaging.

Multichannel Ground-Based Bistatic SAR Receiver for Single-Pass Opportunistic Tomography

Multichannel Ground-Based Bistatic SAR Receiver for Single-Pass Opportunistic Tomography

Modified Adaptive 2-D Calibration Algorithm for Airborne Multichannel SAR-GMTI

The performance of multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR)-based ground moving target indication (GMTI) is inevitably restricted by channel imperfections and imbalances, and channel calibration procedure is incorporated into the scheme accordingly. The adaptive two-dimensional calibration (A2DC) algorithm is sensitive to outliers and suffers from correction errors. To solve the problem, a modified A2DC (MA2DC) algorithm is proposed in this letter. By improving Doppler calibration model, the proposed MA2DC is more robust than the A2DC algorithm. It can effectively suppress clutter while maintaining detailed features of moving targets, after which the detection capability of moving targets in SAR-GMTI is improved. Its performance is demonstrated by the Gotcha data, which is publicly released by Air Force Research Laboratory.

Spaceborne Multichannel SAR Imaging Algorithm for Maritime Moving Targets

Spaceborne multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an effective means to realize high-resolution and wide-swath imaging. However, for spaceborne multi-channel SAR imaging of maritime moving targets, the target motion will cause undesired channel imbalance, i.e., phase error, and further introduce the spurious targets in the image. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel spaceborne multi-channel SAR imaging algorithm for maritime moving targets, which consists of sequential coarse imaging and accurate imaging. The key strategies are to separate different moving targets by coarse imaging and to estimate the phase error based on the relationship between phase errors and amplitudes of spurious targets. First, the quantitative relationship between phase errors and amplitudes of spurious targets is established. Second, based on coarse imaging results, different maritime targets are effectively separated. Then, based on the measured amplitudes of spurious targets, a cost function, which represents the difference between the real target velocity and estimated target velocity, is constructed and minimized to separately estimate the velocities and phase errors of targets. Moreover, to further improve the accuracy of estimation and to suppress the undesired effects caused by target defocusing, clutter, and noise, an iterative strategy is adopted. Last, by auto-focusing, a well-focused SAR image is obtained. The GF-3 dual-channel real data experiment is conducted. The results indicate that the spurious targets are well suppressed, which validates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

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.

Resolution Enhancement for Forwarding Looking Multi-Channel SAR Imagery With Exploiting Space–Time Sparsity

Forward-looking multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (FLMC-SAR) is of the capability to achieve unambiguous 2-D images in the forward-looking slight direction. FLMC-SAR imagery usually suffers from relatively low spatial resolution as only limited Doppler diversity can be generated from the synthetic aperture. In this article, a sparsity-driven resolution enhancement algorithm is proposed to improve the resolution FLMC-SAR image of the forward-looking area. Different from conventional beamforming processing to resolve the FLMC-SAR left–right ambiguity, a Bayesian sparsity reconstruction optimization is developed for jointly ambiguity resolving and resolution enhancement in the azimuth angle image domain. The spatial structure of the target in the preliminary image domain is used as the signal sparsity with prior information to solve the constrained optimization problem for FLMC-SAR image resolution enhancement. A local least square estimator of the prior noise and signal statistics in the FLMC-SAR nonisotropic image is established in terms of determining the sparsity weight parameter. Extensive simulation and real FLMC-SAR data experiments confirm that the proposed algorithm is capable of achieving the unambiguous and resolution-enhanced FLMC-SAR image.

A Novel Method for Staggered SAR Imaging in an Elevation Multichannel System

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an advanced remote sensing technique, capable of observing Earth’s surface independent of weather conditions and sunlight illumination. Restricted by the minimum antenna area, however, conventional spaceborne SAR systems cannot achieve high azimuth resolution in a wide swath. In addition, blind ranges are present as the constant pulse repetition interval (PRI) is used. To solve these problems, a PRI-staggered elevation multichannel SAR (EMC-SAR) system is employed in this article. By transmitting the continuously PRI-varied sequence, the blind ranges are located at different regions in different receive instants, effectively avoiding the loss of coverage in elevation. In this system, three issues are required to be addressed: 1) recovering the missed data located at blind ranges; 2) suppressing range ambiguous components; and 3) restoring the PRI-varied signal into a regular grid. To deal with these problems, we propose a novel SAR imaging method for a PRI-staggered EMC-SAR system. To be applied on-ground, assume downlinking of the individual elevation channels. First, the modified <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\varepsilon $ </tex-math></inline-formula> -insensitive loss tube regression with the L2 regularization method is applied to recover the missed data. Then, the range ambiguous components are suppressed by performing digital beamforming (DBF) based on the elevation multichannel technique, where the covariance matrix is constructed by using an iterative adaptive algorithm. After that, a generalized scaling transform is employed to restore the PRI-varied signal into a uniform sampled grid. Finally, a well-focused SAR image can be obtained by performing the conventional SAR imaging techniques. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by both simulated and real SAR data processing results.

An Unsupervised CNN-Based Multichannel Interferometric Phase Denoising Method Applied to TomoSAR Imaging

Tomographic synthetic aperture radar (TomoSAR) is an advanced SAR interferometric technique to retrieve 3D spatial information. However, the standard deviation in the reconstructed elevation could be high due to the noise in the interferometric phases, which makes the denoising filter crucial before tomographic reconstruction. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised multichannel SAR interferometric phase denoising method based on the Convolution Neural Network (CNN). It utilizes the Weighted Least-Squares (WLS) regularization combining with the covariance of multichannel interferometric phases to minimize the standard deviation of phase noise, which leads to the accurate and complete TomoSAR reconstruction. This network is trained by real SAR images and the results of both simulated and real observations verify the effectiveness of our proposed method.