Publications

Typical synthetic aperture RADAR (SAR) imaging employs a co-located RADAR transmitter and receiver. Bistatic SAR imaging separates the transmitter and receiver locations. A bistatic SAR configuration allows for the transmitter and receiver(s) to be in a variety of geometric alignments. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) / New Mexico proposed the deployment of a ground-based RADAR receiver. This RADAR receiver was coupled with the capability of digitizing and recording the signal collected. SNL proposed the possibility of creating an image of targets the illuminating SAR observes. This document describes the developed hardware, software, bistatic SAR configuration, and its deployment to test the concept of a ground-based bistatic SAR. In the proof-of-concept experiments herein, the RADAR transmitter will be a commercial SAR satellite and the RADAR receiver will be deployed at ground level, observing and capturing RADAR ground/targets illuminated by the satellite system.

A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) which employs direct IF sampling can significantly reduce the complexity of the analog electronics prior to the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). For relatively high frequency IF bands, a wide-bandwidth track-and-hold amplifier (THA) is required prior to the ADC. The THA functions primarily as a means of converting, through bandpass sampling, the IF signal to a baseband signal which can be sampled by the ADC. For a wide-band, high dynamic-range receiver system, such as a SAR receiver, stringent performance requirements are placed on the THA. We first measure the THA parameters such as gain, gain compression, third-order intercept (TOI), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), spurious-free dynamic-range (SFDR), noise figure (NF), and phase noise. The results are then analyzed in terms of their respective impact on the overall performance of the SAR. The specific THA under consideration is the Rockwell Scientific RTH010.