The Ingara Bistatic SAR Upgrade: First Results

An upgrade programme to add a bistatic collection capability to the Ingara airborne X-band fully-polarimetric imaging radar has recently been completed, and the first field trials of the new bistatic SAR system were conducted in December 2007. This involved a set of experimental SAR data collections in a bistatic geometry, in which the airborne radar was operated in a fine-resolution (600 MHz bandwidth) circular spotlight-SAR mode, in conjunction with a newly-developed fully-polarimetric stationary ground-based bistatic receiver. These data collections were largely successful, and produced a set of fully-polarimetric bistatic SAR data, collected over a wide range of bistatic angles. In this paper, we give an overview of the Ingara bistatic SAR system, describe the recent bistatic SAR experiment, discuss the techniques employed for processing the data, and present preliminary experimental results.