RADIO PHYSICS AND RADIO ASTRONOMY

An experimental ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) system operating at Ka-band has been developed. The system is designed to be operated from a top a hill or from a building roof, etc. for imaging the underlying ground terrain. The radar hardware system, operating mode and original data processing techniques are described in the paper. A high-duty-cycle long-LFM-pulse mode (quasi-continuous mode) has been used. An effective adaptive matched filtering for range compression has been introduced that provides high dynamic range and high coherency for the radar system. A prominent point processing autofocus has been implemented for the precise estimation and compensation of motion errors of the radar platform. The achieved performance of the GB-SAR system is illustrated with experimental data.

Keywords: synthetic aperture radar (SAR), ground-based SAR, pulse compression side lobes, motion error compensation,
autofocusing, radar applications, radar remote sensing

Manuscript submitted 17.04.2015

Radio phys. radio astron. 2015, 20(2): 154-167

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