Passive Bistatic Ground-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar: Concept, System, and Experiment Results

• Main Authors: Weike Feng, Jean-Michel Friedt, Giovanni Nico, Suyun Wang, Gilles Martin, Motoyuki Sato
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
• Series: Remote Sensing
• Subjects: ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR); passive bistatic radar (PBR); satellite digital TV signal; synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging; displacement estimation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/15/1753

A passive bistatic ground-based synthetic aperture radar (PB-GB-SAR) system without a dedicated transmitter has been developed by using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware for local-area high-resolution imaging and displacement measurement purposes. Different from the frequency-modulated or frequency-stepped continuous wave signal commonly used by GB-SAR, the continuous digital TV signal broadcast by a geostationary satellite has been adopted by PB-GB-SAR. In order to increase the coherence between the reference and surveillance channels, frequency and phase synchronization of multiple low noise blocks (LNBs) has been conducted. Then, the back-projection algorithm (BPA) and the range migration algorithm (RMA) have been modified for PB-GB-SAR to get the focused SAR image. Field experiments have been carried out to validate the designed PB-GB-SAR system and the proposed methods. It has been found that different targets within 100 m (like the fence, light pole, tree, and car) can be imaged by the PB-GB-SAR system. With a metallic plate moved on a positioner, it has been observed that the displacement of the target can be estimated by PB-GB-SAR with submillimeter accuracy.