Spaceborne Radar Systems Research Articles

An improved geolocation methodology for spaceborne radar and lidar systems

Abstract. Geolocation and co-registration methodologies are essential for the accurate interpretation of observations from spaceborne remote sensors. In preparations for the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE), here, we refine the definition of these techniques and present various examples of geolocation assessments. The geolocation methods build upon earlier work; however, they introduce several improvements that have increased the reliability of the geolocation accuracy. The EarthCARE active-sensor geolocation methods use coastlines and significant elevation gradients in both statistical and numerical ways. The effectiveness of the proposed geolocation methods was tested using the extensive record of CloudSat and CALIPSO observations. The EarthCARE active-sensor geolocation methods were effective in identifying and correcting a short period of CloudSat observations when the star tracker was not operating properly. In addition, the geolocation methods were able to reproduce the excellent geolocation record of the CloudSat and CALIPSO missions.

Analysis of the effectiveness of using complex probing signals to range ambiguity suppression in space monitoring systems

To improve the range resolution, it is necessary to expand the capture band. However, this leads to range ambiguity interference. This problem is especially serious in space view systems. Therefore, methods of reduction of ambiguity interference are an important part of the information processing system. In modern SAR systems, chirp signals are usually used as probing signals. However, other broadband signals with frequency modulation or PSK signals with different laws of intra-pulse modulation can be used to obtain a radar image. The aim of the work is to analyze the effectiveness of using complex probing signals to reduce range ambiguity interference in space-borne radar systems. In this work, models of radio holograms and radar images of a point target based on chirp signals, signals with hyperbolic and V-shaped frequency modulation are obtained. The results of processing probing chirp signals with pulse-by-pulse change of frequency signs, as well as BPSK signals and ensembles of BPSK signals are also considered.

Minimum detection velocity performance analysis for air moving target detection in a spaceborne surveillance radar system

AbstractDue to the advantages of wide coverage, continuous remote monitoring, and high measurement accuracy, the spaceborne multi‐channel surveillance radar has been widely used for the air moving target detection and tracking. In this paper, the minimum detection velocity (MDV) definition for the aerial target detection performance evaluation in a spaceborne multi‐channel radar system is analysed, where three kinds of MDV definitions based on empirical formula, output signal‐to‐clutter‐plus‐noise ratio (SCNR) loss criterion, and output SCNR criterion are discussed in detail based on theoretical analysis and simulation verification. The analysis results will provide valuable reference for the practical spaceborne radar system designment with the air target detection mode.

Range-Ambiguous Sea Clutter Suppression for Multichannel Spaceborne Radar Applications Via Alternating APC Processing

In this article, a novel range ambiguous cluter suppression method, i.e., alternating azitmuth phase coding (AAPC), based on azimuth phase coding (APC) is proposed, where the blind areas of target detection are solved. Based on the motion model of spaceborne radar (SBR) system, the sea clutter motion property is analyzed, and a multichannel sea clutter signal model with the consideration of range ambiguity is established. After that, the novel method AAPC is proposed. Finally, a time-domain sliding window projection method with the consideration of clutter internal motions is proposed to realize the sea clutter rejection. Compared with the current range-ambiguous sea clutter suppression algorithms, the improvements of this method are: 1) the range-ambiguous clutter can be separated and most of the clutter components in the main-lobe region can be rejected; and 2) the repetitive detection blind regions can be avoided by applying the proposed AAPC technique. Simulation results are presented to validate the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.

Air Moving Target Indication in Nadir Region for Spaceborne Surveillance Radar Systems

For air moving target indication in nadir region, due to the fact that a spaceborne radar beam can illuminate the top of fuselage, the target radar cross section is usually high, which is beneficial for the detection of a low-observable target. However, due to the short slant range, specular reflection effect, and relatively low radar ground resolution, the power of clutter component from nadir region is comparatively high, leading to the insufficient clutter suppression and the degradation of target detection performance. Fortunately, when an air moving target is adequately high, the target echo is able to be separated from the main clutter echoes due to a shorter time delay, making it possible to be only mixed with low-power ambiguous clutter echoes. Based on these considerations, this paper analyzes the performance of air moving target indication in nadir region for a spaceborne surveillance radar system. It analyzes the target minimum detectable velocities with different target heights and beam center elevation angles. Also, an effective sample selection method based on adaptive range segmentation is proposed to solve the power heterogeneity issue between the main clutter area and the range ambiguous clutter area. As a conclusion, the larger the elevation angle of an air moving target is, the higher the minimum target detectable height is.

Tomographic Imaging for Orbital Radar Sounding of Earth's Ice Sheets

BingSat-Tomographic Observation of Polar Ice Sheets (BingSat-TOPIS) is a spaceborne multistatic radar sounding system that can achieve high resolution and stereoscopic observation. It is designed to penetrate ice sheets and acquire tomographic image. The satellite group fly over the Polar Regions, which can form about 6.56-km cross-track baseline. This cross-track baseline is formed by one master satellite and 40 slave CubeSats. In this article, we propose a tomographic imaging algorithm for orbital radar sounding of the Earth's ice sheets. First, we give the method to calculate the two-way slant range in air and ice. The phase errors of the method are smaller than π/4 rad. Second, we express the radar data cube for a point target in ice sheets. The radar data cube is made of 40 bistatic synthetic aperture radar echo signals. At last, the echoes are simulated for the TOPIS system, and a matched filter is used for pulse compression in range. Then, the back projection algorithm is used in track and cross-track imaging. The experimental results demonstrate that our tomographic imaging algorithm is effective and reliable.

A C/X/Ku/K-Band Precision Compact 6-Bit Digital Attenuator with Logic Control Circuits

This paper proposes a C/X/Ku/K band 6-bit digital step attenuator (DSA) which employs a variety of improved attenuation cells to achieve a wide bandwidth, stable amplitude variation, stable phase variation, and small area. In this paper, the improved T-type, π-type, and switched-path type topologies are analyzed theoretically and applied to different attenuation values to achieve the optimal attenuator performance. In addition, in order to reduce the complexity and to improve the stability of the overall radar system, the logic control circuit is integrated in the DSA chip in this paper. Finally, the proposed attenuator is implemented in 0.15μm GaAs technology, which has a maximum attenuation range of 31.5 dB with 0.5 dB steps. The proposed DSA exhibits a root-mean-square (RMS) attenuation error of less than 0.15 dB and an RMS phase error of less than 3°, at 4–24 GHz. The insertion loss (IL) and the area of the DSA are 4.3–4.5 dB and 1.5 mm × 0.4 mm, respectively. Benefiting from the improvements of the attenuation cells and the characteristic of GaAs technology with strong resistance to radiation and power processing capability, the proposed DSA is suitable for spaceborne radar systems.

A Robust Dual-Platform GMTI Method against Nonuniform Clutter

The ground moving-target indication (GMTI) technique can detect civil and military moving targets, which means that this technique has received much attention. Strong clutter background suppression is one of the critical problems in this application. However, the detection performance in heterogeneous environment can be degraded due to the inaccurate estimation of the clutter covariance matrix (CCM). In this paper, we propose a robust GMTI method using a spaceborne dual-platform synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, which can obtain highly accurate CCM in nonuniform clutter. Firstly, the accurate CCM is estimated based on the SAR image obtained by the former platform. Then, space–time adaptive processing (STAP) is carried out using the obtained the CCM. Finally, the detection threshold is set according to the estimated CCM and detection is executed accurately. Compared with the traditional CCM estimation method in STAP using the clutter nearby the cell under test, this method directly estimates the CCM using the clutter of the cell under test, which can avoid CCM estimation mistakes in heterogeneous clutter environment. The clutter can be whitened and depressed more effectively. Additionally, with the accurate threshold acquired from the CCM, the detection probability can be effectively improved under a certain false-alarm criterion. Based on simulation data, GMTI experiments in a heterogeneous environment such as clutter with strong pollution, junction zone of hot and cold clutter, and clutter with nonuniform power are carried out; the results show that the moving targets can be effectively detected with the proposed method.

Coherent backscatter enhancement in bistatic Ku- and X-band radar observations of dry snow

Abstract. The coherent backscatter opposition effect (CBOE) enhances the backscatter intensity of electromagnetic waves by up to a factor of 2 in a very narrow cone around the direct return direction when multiple scattering occurs in a weakly absorbing, disordered medium. So far, this effect has not been investigated in terrestrial snow in the microwave spectrum. It has also received little attention in scattering models. We present the first characterization of the CBOE in dry snow using ground-based and spaceborne bistatic radar systems. For a seasonal snowpack in the Ku-band (17.2 GHz), we found backscatter enhancement of 50 %–60 % (+1.8–2.0 dB) at a zero bistatic angle and a peak half-width at half-maximum (HWHM) of 0.25∘. In the X-band (9.65 GHz), we found backscatter enhancement of at least 35 % (+1.3 dB) and an estimated HWHM of 0.12∘ in the accumulation areas of glaciers in the Jungfrau–Aletsch region, Switzerland. Sampling of the peak shape at different bistatic angles allows estimating the scattering and absorption mean free paths, ΛT and ΛA. In the VV polarization, we obtained ΛT=0.4±0.1 m and ΛA=19±12 m at the Ku-band and ΛT=2.1±0.4 m and ΛA=21.8±2.7 m at the X-band, assuming an optically thick medium. The HH polarization yielded similar results. The observed backscatter enhancement is thus significant enough to require consideration in backscatter models describing monostatic and bistatic radar experiments. Enhanced backscattering beyond the Earth, on the surface of solar system bodies, has been interpreted as being caused by the presence of water ice. In agreement with this interpretation, our results confirm the presence of the CBOE at X- and Ku-band frequencies in terrestrial snow.

A Novel Space-Borne High-Resolution SAR System with the Non-Uniform Hybrid Sampling Technology for Space Targets Imaging

In order to reduce the complexity of the receiving system for wideband signals, a novel space-borne high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system with the non-uniform hybrid sampling technology is proposed in this paper. The non-uniform hybrid sampling technology is firstly applied in the SAR imaging system for the detection of space targets. The non-uniform hybrid sampling technology is able to optimize the transmitted and receiving timing of SAR signals, reducing the requirement of the sampling rate of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for the reception of the wideband echoes from space targets. Meanwhile, according to the oversampling requirement of SAR imaging in the azimuth direction, a theoretical model of non-uniform hybrid sampling parameters and relative velocity between the SAR system and the space targets is established. A series of simulation experiments with different targets and different non-uniform hybrid parameters are performed, and an X-band SAR imaging experimental system is constructed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed non-uniform hybrid sampling technology. The experimental results show that the imaging resolution is better than 8 cm. When the non-uniform hybrid sampling interval is 15 us, the imaging quality is consistent with imaging results of the Nyquist real-time sampling, and it is easier to implement in the high-resolution imaging for space targets.

Snow water equivalent change mapping from slope-correlated synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) phase variations

Abstract. Area-based measurements of snow water equivalent (SWE) are important for understanding earth system processes such as glacier mass balance, winter hydrological storage in drainage basins, and ground thermal regimes. Remote sensing techniques are ideally suited for wide-scale area-based mapping with the most commonly used technique to measure SWE being passive microwave, which is limited to coarse spatial resolutions of 25 km or greater and to areas without significant topographic variation. Passive microwave also has a negative bias for large SWE. Another method is repeat-pass synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) that allows measurement of SWE change at much higher spatial resolution. However, it has not been widely adopted because (1) the phase unwrapping problem has not been robustly addressed, especially for interferograms with poor coherence, and (2) SWE change maps scaled directly from repeat-pass interferograms are not an absolute measurement but contain unknown offsets for each contiguous coherent area. We develop and test a novel method for repeat-pass InSAR-based dry-snow SWE estimation that exploits the sensitivity of the dry-snow refraction-induced InSAR phase to topographic variations. The method robustly estimates absolute SWE change at spatial resolutions of < 1 km without the need for phase unwrapping. We derive a quantitative signal model for this new SWE change estimator and identify the relevant sources of bias. The method is demonstrated using both simulated SWE distributions and a 9-year RADARSAT-2 (C-band, 5.405 GHz) spotlight-mode dataset near Inuvik, Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. SWE results are compared to in situ snow survey measurements and estimates from ERA5 reanalysis. Our method performs well in high-relief areas, thus providing complementary coverage to passive-microwave-based SWE estimation. Further, our method has the advantage of requiring only a single wavelength band and thus can utilize existing spaceborne synthetic aperture radar systems.

Parallel Optimisation and Implementation of a Real-Time Back Projection (BP) Algorithm for SAR Based on FPGA.

This study conducts an in-depth evaluation of imaging algorithms and software and hardware architectures to meet the capability requirements of real-time image acquisition systems, such as spaceborne and airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. By analysing the principles and models of SAR imaging, this research creatively puts forward the fully parallel processing architecture for the back projection (BP) algorithm based on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The processing time consumption has significant advantages compared with existing methods. This article describes the BP imaging algorithm, which stands out with its high processing accuracy and two-dimensional decoupling of distance and azimuth, and analyses the algorithmic flow, operation, and storage requirements. The algorithm is divided into five core operations: range pulse compression, upsampling, oblique distance calculation, data reading, and phase accumulation. The architecture and optimisation of the algorithm are presented, and the optimisation methods are described in detail from the perspective of algorithm flow, fixed-point operation, parallel processing, and distributed storage. Next, the maximum resource utilisation rate of the hardware platform in this study is found to be more than 80%, the system power consumption is 21.073 W, and the processing time efficiency is better than designs with other FPGA, DSP, GPU, and CPU. Finally, the correctness of the processing results is verified using actual data. The experimental results showed that 1.1 s were required to generate an image with a size of 900 × 900 pixels at a 200 MHz clock rate. This technology can solve the multi-mode, multi-resolution, and multi-geometry signal processing problems in an integrated manner, thus laying a foundation for the development of a new, high-performance, SAR system for real-time imaging processing.

Polarimetric radar interferometry in the presence of differential Faraday rotation

Faraday rotation (FR) affects the low-frequency transionospheric radar by creating cross-talk between polarizations. The baseline part of FR can be compensated for by applying an appropriate linear transformation—rotation with a known FR angle. Yet the differential Faraday rotation (dFR), which is a frequency-dependent part of FR, persists and introduces distortions into the observations. We build a simplified model with two polarimetric scattering channels that allows us to evaluate the effect of dFR on the accuracy of PolInSAR reconstruction. We also assess the severity of distortions due to dFR for the future BIOMASS mission and several other spaceborne radar systems.

A Novel Sea Clutter Rejection Algorithm for Spaceborne Multichannel Radar Systems

Due to the high-speed movement of a spaceborne radar (SBR) platform, the geographic clutter spectrum expands severely, resulting in the useful moving target signal submerged by the main-lobe clutter background. To deal with this issue, the equipped multichannel arrays in an SBR system provide sufficient spatial degrees, and as a consequence, the space-time adaptive processing (STAP) technology is often preferred to achieve the moving target detection, even in the main-lobe clutter regions. However, for the moving target detection under the sea scene, due to the complex internal motion of sea clutter, the clutter signal received by an SBR system may possess the space- and time-varying characteristics, worsening the multichannel clutter rejection performance using the traditional STAP techniques. In this article, a novel sea clutter suppression method based on the joint space-time-frequency adaptive filtering is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, according to the coherent time analysis of sea clutter, the subaperture time-domain sliding window is employed to alleviate the clutter decorrelation effect, and then, a modified subspace projection technique is applied to accomplish the first-stage clutter rejection. After realizing the effective signal recovery with respect to these residual subaperture clutter data, the second-stage spatial filtering method is applied to realize the final clutter suppression with respect to the relatively high Doppler resolution clutter returns. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by both simulated multichannel sea clutter data and real-measured sea clutter data.

Impact of Incidence Angle Diversity on SMOS and Sentinel-1 Soil Moisture Retrievals at Coarse and Fine Scales

Incidence angle diversity of space-borne radiometer and radar systems operating at low microwave frequencies needs to be taken into consideration to accurately estimate soil moisture (<i>SM</i>) across spatial scales. In this study, the Single Channel Algorithm (SCA) is first applied to SMOS brightness temperatures at vertical polarization (<i>TB_V</i>) to estimate <i>SM</i> at coarse-resolution (25 km) and develop a land cover-specific and incidence angle (32.5&#x00B0;, 42.5&#x00B0; and 52.5&#x00B0;)-adaptive calibration of single scattering albedo (&#x03C9;) and soil roughness (<i>h_s</i>) parameters. These effective parameters are used together with fine-scale multi-angular Sentinel-1 backscatter in a single-pass active-passive downscaling approach to estimate <i>TB_V</i> at fine-scale (1 km) for each SMOS incidence angle. These <i>TB_V</i> are finally inverted to obtain the corresponding high-resolution <i>SM</i> maps. Results over the Iberian Peninsula for year 2018 show an increasing trend of &#x03C9; and a decreasing trend of <i>h_s</i> with SMOS incidence angle, with almost no variability of &#x03C9; across land cover types. The active-passive covariation parameter is shown to increase with SMOS incidence angle and decrease with Sentinel-1 incidence angle. Coarse and fine <i>TB_V</i> maps from the three SMOS incidence angles show similar distributions (mean differences below 0.38 K). Resulting high-resolution <i>SM</i> maps have maximum differences in mean and standard deviation of 0.016 and 0.015 m³/m³, respectively, and compare well with <i>in situ</i> measurements. Our results indicate that model-based microwave approaches to estimate <i>SM</i> can be adequately adapted to account for the incidence angle diversity of planned missions such as CIMR, ROSE-L and Sentinel-1 next generation.

Sparse SAR Imaging Based on Periodic Block Sampling Data

Recently, a novel design scheme of low-earth-orbit spaceborne mini-synthetic aperture radar (MiniSAR) system is proposed to exploit the integrated transceiver to collect the azimuth periodic block sampling data by using alternated transmitting and receiving operations. Because such collected data are downsampled, the images recovered by the typical matched filtering (MF)-based methods have the problems of obvious azimuth ambiguities, ghosts, and energy dispersion. To find a suitable method for such data, with the help of sparse signal processing technique, we first introduce sparse synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm regularization-based approximated observation method to recover the large-scale considered scene. To further improve the imaging performance, a novel approximated observation unambiguous sparse SAR imaging method via <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{2,1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm is proposed. Compared with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm -based method, the recovered image by the proposed one achieves better imaging quality with reduced azimuth ambiguities and ghosts. Experimental results on simulated and real data validate the proposed method.

A Modified Keystone Transform Matched Filtering Method for Space-Moving Target Detection

High speed, high maneuverability, and weak space-moving targets (SMTs) are major threats for space-borne radar (SBR) systems. First, the severe range migration (RM) and Doppler extension are induced by complex relative motion between the radar platform and non-cooperative moving targets, making moving target detection (MTD), and parameter estimation particularly difficult. Apart from this challenge, Doppler ambiguity and Doppler aliasing arise from the limited pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of a SBR system to ensure an adequate coverage rate, which may make the existing MTD algorithms deteriorate dramatically. To address these issues, we focus on the detection of high speed and high maneuverability targets based on the modified keystone transform matched filtering (MKTMF), whose Doppler frequency exceeds PRF as well as spans multiple PRFs. The proposed method is suitable for the weak MTD under a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) case since the nonlinear operation is not involved. Finally, some numerical results and real data results are provided to validate the superiority of the proposed method.

Multichannel Signal Modeling and AMTI Performance Analysis for Distributed Space-Based Radar Systems

Due to the limited size, carrying capacity, power-aperture product, and high hardware cost of satellite platform, the traditional single-platform spaceborne radar system encounters the problems of poor target minimum detectable velocity (MDV) performance, considerably deteriorating the moving target detection performance. To improve the air moving target indication (AMTI) performance, especially for a weak target, distributed space-based radar system (DSBR) becomes a good candidate due to the longer along-track baseline (ATB) and spatial power synthesis. However, due to the sparse configuration of radar baseline distribution, the detection performance of air moving targets (AMTs) will be restricted by many practical factors in an actual DSBR system. In this paper, multi-channel signal models of an observed moving target and ground clutter are accurately established in a DSBR framework, where the error influences of cross-track baseline (CTB), terrain fluctuation, and channel inconsistency response are considered. Then, the influence of the non-ideal factors, including the channel noise, long-intersatellite ATB, long-intersatellite CTB, synchronization errors, and interchannel amplitude and phase inconsistency errors, on the AMTI performance is analyzed term by term. The simulation results provide the useful guidance for the system design of a DSBR with the AMTI tasks.

A Novel Channel Phase Error Calibration Method Based on Hybrid AFSA-GSO-GA for Multichannel HRWS-SAR Imaging

The spaceborne high-resolution wide-swath synthetic aperture radar (HRWS-SAR) system generally does not meet the optimal SAR imaging configuration, and thus, it is necessary to apply digital beam-forming filtering technology to restore the nonuniformly sampled signal into the uniform grids. However, in practice, because of the influences of temperature, receiving machine, and other error factors, the channel errors may possibly exist, causing the SAR image to be smeared. To address this issue, this letter proposes a novel algorithm based on the hybrid artificial fish school algorithm–glowworm swarm optimization–genetic algorithm (AFSA-GSO-GA) to address the channel imbalance issue. First, coarse HRWS-SAR imaging processing is performed to obtain the positions of the Doppler ambiguity components. Then, according to the designed cost function, the hybrid AFSA-GSO-GA algorithm is used to realize the channel phase error estimation. Finally, a well-focused SAR image can be obtained after channel balance. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by both simulated and real SAR data.

Радіолокаційне спостереження довгих поверхневих хвиль у Тихому океані

Subject and Purpose. The paper addresses interaction processes going in the ocean–atmosphere system and is concerned with their research by the method of radar remote sensing. Specifically, the matter of concern is the detection and parameter estimation of long waves, including nonlinear ones, on the ocean surface. Methods and Methodology. In August 1988, a series of successive radar surveys of long surface wave manifestations on the Pacific Ocean surface was carried out in the 3 cm wave range by means of an airborne X-band radar system “Analog”. The analysis of the results includes estimation of both spatial and frequency features of the detected long-wave packets and, also, a comparison of the measurement results with model calculations performed in the framework of theory of radio wave scattering by the sea surface in the presence of seismic wave effects. Results. Radar images of wave packets of long surface waves in the open ocean have been obtained. From the imaging data, the spatial scale (5…10 km) of these waves, the lengths (1…5 km) of wave packet components and the wave packet velocity (6.1 m/s) have been derived. Analysis has been given to the nonlinear form of wave packet components, and their amplitudes have been estimated by comparing the experimental and theoretically obtained radio contrasts. The bathymetry of the surface-wave track has been performed to suggest that the observed wave packet represents a set of solitons generated by a seismic impact with the further underwater collapse. Conclusions. A possibility has been demonstrated for monitoring wave packets of long surface waves in their propagation dynamics. The experiments of the sort for gaining a deeper insight into the ocean–atmosphere interaction physics can be conducted by means of not only airborne but also spaceborne radar systems with allowance made for the rate of surveys in both time and space.