Indoor radiometric coherent imaging in range-azimuth plane using ground based Ka-band noise waveform SAR equipment

Current paper is devoted to coherent radiometric imaging systems. The investigated systems may be considered as a version of bistatic noise waveform radar with synthetic aperture having external reference. Reference signal in this imaging system is received from the investigated object using auxiliary receiver. Absence of need in radiation of sounding signal provides such desirable characteristics as good electromagnetic compatibility, low power consumption, high covertness and long lifetime. Although a number of theoretical studies on aperture synthesis imaging algorithms exist, relatively few of them deal with experimental investigation. In particular, no information concerning range-azimuth coherent radiometric imaging has been found. In this paper, an experimental investigation of possibility to obtain coherent radiometric images with two antennas with synthesized beam [1, 2] is carried out. Indoor radiometric imaging has been validated using absorbers as the targets. These experiments enabled to estimate range resolution of radiometric system achieved by focusing antennas with synthesized beam for range span limited by means about bistatic baseline.