SAR/MTI from helicopters

Author

Axelsson, Sune ; Nelander, Anders

Author_Institution

Swedish Defence Res. Agency, Linkoping, Sweden

Volume

7

fYear

2003

fDate

21-25 July 2003

Firstpage

4242

Abstract

MTI/SAR is a well established technique for airborne surveillance. In a helicopter these two modes of operation can be combined as well. The helicopter can also easily move in the vertical direction, making SAR mapping of the height profile of the ground surface possible. In this paper, MTI/SAR from a helicopter is studied in more detail. Relationships are developed between the involved parameters, and the performance is displayed in some examples. Phase error compensation is needed by IMU or autofocusing due to the non-linear movement of the antenna along the SAR path. Highly improved mapping performance can be achieved by using an ESA with multiple beam generation, or high speed scanning. For high resolution mapping in three dimensions interferometric SAR is needed.

Keywords

airborne radar; helicopters; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; terrain mapping; SAR mapping; SAR-MTI; airborne surveillance; antenna; helicopters; high resolution mapping; interferometric SAR; multiple beam generation; non-linear movement; phase error compensation; Antenna measurements; Bandwidth; Directive antennas; Doppler radar; Frequency; Helicopters; Radar antennas; Radar clutter; Surveillance; Velocity measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2003. IGARSS '03. Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7929-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2003.1295476

Filename

1295476