Real-time road traffic monitoring using a fast a priori knowledge based SAR-GMTI algorithm

Radar systems operating on high altitude platforms can provide traffic information over wide areas, independent of sunlight illumination and weather conditions. In the paper, a novel a priori knowledge based ground moving target indication (GMTI) and parameter estimation algorithm applicable on single- as well as on multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is presented. Only the intersection points of the moving vehicle signals with the a priori known road axes, which are mapped into the range-compressed data domain, are evaluated. The algorithm needs low computational load and is hence well suited for real-time traffic monitoring applications.