Azimuth positioning of moving targets in two-channel SAR by direction-of-arrival estimation

Many present and future SAR systems that are also intended to measure and monitor moving objects on the ground will be restricted to only two parallel antenna apertures owing to the enormous costs involved for extra receiver channels. This is particularly true for space-based systems, such as RADARSAT-2 and TerraSAR-X. Classical techniques to simultaneously detect moving targets by rejecting the superimposed clutter and to estimate their correct locations subsequently via direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimates cannot be applied owing to the dual-receiver limitation. Proposed is an alternative method to retrieve clutter-suppressed target signals in the individual channels that allow the application of DoA-estimation and verifies its feasibility with measured airborne SAR data.