Performance of RADARSAT2 SAR-GMTI Processors at High SAR Resolutions

摘要

Canada' 5 RADARSAT2 commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite, scheduled to be launched in Spring 2003, will have an experimental operating mode that will permit Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) measurements to be made with received data. In this mode of operation, the radar antenna is partitioned into two sub-apertures that sequentially observe the scene of interest from the same points in space. Two GMTI processing approaches are currently being explored. One utilizes the classical SAR/DPCA (Displaced Phase Center Antenna) clutter cancellation technique to provide sub-clutter visibility for dim slowly moving objects. The other is based on the Along-Track Interferometric SAR (SARIATI) technique, where amplitude and phase information of the targets are exploited to extract them from the background clutter. In this paper the performance of each processor is examined for RADARSAT2's ultrafine beam mode. The study focuses on the influence of SAR resolution cell size on the GMTI processor performance. Results indicate that at high SAR resolutions the SAR/ATI is a better technique compared to the SAR/DPCA in its ability to detect slow-moving targets.