Enhanced WiMAX SAR system equipped with multiple modes

Widespread use of WiMAX systems has lowered the cost of radio units significantly. We previously proposed a low cost single-mode Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system which took advantage of these low-cost WiMAX transceiver units. However, the imaging swath of this system was limited due to the short length of the cyclic prefix (CP) of WiMAX. In this paper, we propose a multi-mode WiMAX SAR to overcome this limitation. Specifically, we first put forward a design of scan-mode WiMAX SAR, which significantly expands the slant range swath for surveillance and imaging applications. Subsequently, spotlight and squint-mode WiMAX SAR are also proposed to enhance imaging quality. Finally, a windowing scheme on reference data at the receiver is proposed to reduce ghost images in the direction of range. The validity of proposed design is confirmed through detailed simulation results.