Radar ISR does not always involve cooperative or even friendly targets. An adversary has numerous techniques available to him to counter the effectiveness of a radar ISR sensor. These generally fall under the banner of jamming, spoofing, or otherwise interfering with the EM signals required by the radar sensor. Consequently mitigation techniques are prudent to retain efficacy of the radar sensor. We discuss in general terms a number of mitigation techniques.
Spurious energy in received radar data is a consequence of nonideal component and circuit behavior. This might be due to I/Q imbalance, nonlinear component behavior, additive interference (e.g. cross-talk, etc.), or other sources. The manifestation of the spurious energy in a range-Doppler map or image can be influenced by appropriate pulse-to-pulse phase modulation. Comparing multiple images having been processed with the same data but different signal paths and modulations allows identifying undesired spurs and then cropping or apodizing them.
When multiple channels are employed in a pulse-Doppler radar, achieving and maintaining balance between the channels is problematic. In some circumstances the channels may be commutated to achieve adequate balance. Commutation is the switching, trading, toggling, or multiplexing of the channels between signal paths. Commutation allows modulating the imbalance energy away from the balanced energy in Doppler, where it can be mitigated with filtering.
Fine resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems necessarily require wide bandwidths that often overlap spectrum utilized by other wireless services. These other emitters pose a source of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) to the SAR echo signals that degrades SAR image quality. Filtering, or excising, the offending spectral contaminants will mitigate the interference, but at a cost of often degrading the SAR image in other ways, notably by raising offensive sidelobe levels. This report proposes borrowing an idea from nonlinear sidelobe apodization techniques to suppress interference without the attendant increase in sidelobe levels. The simple post-processing technique is termed Apodized RFI Filtering (ARF).
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) performance testing and estimation is facilitated by observing the system response to known target scene elements. Trihedral corner reflectors and other canonical targets play an important role because their Radar Cross Section (RCS) can be calculated analytically. However, reflector orientation and the proximity of the ground and mounting structures can significantly impact the accuracy and precision with which measurements can be made. These issues are examined in this report.
It is well known that the spectrum of a signal can be calculated with a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), where best resolution is achieved by processing the entire data set. However, in some situations it is advantageous to use a staged approach, where data is first processed within subapertures, and the results are then combined and further processed to a final result. An artifact of this approach is the creation of grating lobes in the final response. The nature of the grating lobes, including their amplitude and spacing, is an artifact of window taper functions, subaperture offsets, and subaperture processing parameters. We assess these factors and exemplify their effects.
The "location" of the radar is the reference location to which the radar measures range. This is typically the antenna's "phase center". However, the antenna's phase center is not generally obvious, and may not correspond to any seemingly obvious physical location, such as the focal point of a dish reflector. This report calculates the phase center of an offset-fed dish reflector antenna.
The performance of an Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) system depends on a variety of factors, many which are interdependent in some manner. In this report we specifically examine ISAR as applied to maritime targets (e.g. ships). It is often difficult to get your arms around the problem of ascertaining achievable performance limits, and yet those limits exist and are dictated by physics. This report identifies and explores those limits, and how they depend on hardware system parameters and environmental conditions. Ultimately, this leads to a characterization of parameters that offer optimum performance for the overall ISAR system. While the information herein is not new to the literature, its collection into a single report hopes to offer some value in reducing the seek time.
Backprojection has long been applied to SAR image formation. It has equal utility in forming the range-velocity maps for Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) radar processing. In particular, it overcomes the problem of targets migrating through range resolution cells.
Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been used for a variety of dual-use research applications since the 1940s. By measuring the direction of the electric field vector from radar echoes, polarimetry may enhance an analysts understanding of scattering effects for both earth monitoring and tactical surveillance missions. Polarimetry may provide insight into surface types, materials, or orientations for natural and man-made targets. Polarimetric measurements may also be used to enhance the contrast between scattering surfaces such as man-made objects and their surroundings. This report represents an initial assessment of the utility of, and applications for, polarimetric SAR at Ku-band for airborne or unmanned aerial systems.
The earths atmosphere affects the velocity of propagation of microwave signals. This imparts a range error to radar range measurements that assume the typical simplistic model for propagation velocity. This range error is a function of atmospheric constituents, such as water vapor, as well as the geometry of the radar data collection, notably altitude and range. Models are presented for calculating atmospheric effects on radar range measurements, and compared against more elaborate atmospheric models.
The earth isnt flat, and radar beams dont travel straight. This becomes more noticeable as range increases, particularly at shallow depression/grazing angles. This report explores models for characterizing this behavior.
The Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of a radar echo signal will vary across a range swath, due to spherical wavefront spreading, atmospheric attenuation, and antenna beam illumination. The antenna beam illumination will depend on antenna pointing. Calculations of geometry are complicated by the curved earth, and atmospheric refraction. This report investigates optimizing antenna pointing to maximize the minimum SNR across the range swath.
Proper waveform parameter selection allows collecting Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) phase history data on a rotated grid in the Fourier Space of the scene being imaged. Subsequent image formation preserves the rotated geometry to allow SAR images to be formed at arbitrary rotation angles without the use of computationally expensive interpolation or resampling operations. This should be useful where control of image orientation is desired such as generating squinted stripmaps and VideoSAR applications, among others.
In high-power microwave power amplifiers for radar, distortion in both amplitude and phase should generally be expected. Phase distortions can be readily equalized. Some amplitude distortions are more problematic than others. In general, especially for SAR using LFM chirps, low frequency modulations such as gain slopes can be tolerated much better than multiple cycles of ripple across the passband of the waveform.
A horn-fed dish reflector antenna has characteristics including beam pattern that are a function of its mechanical form. The beam pattern can be altered by changing the mechanical configuration of the antenna. One way to do this is with a reflecting insert or shim added to the face of the original dish.
The purpose of this report is to provide a background to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image formation using the Polar Format (PFA) processing algorithm. This is meant to be an aid to those tasked to implement real-time image formation using the Polar Format processing algorithm.
The performance of a Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) radar system depends on a variety of factors, many which are interdependent in some manner. It is often difficult to 'get your arms around' the problem of ascertaining achievable performance limits, and yet those limits exist and are dictated by physics. This report identifies and explores those limits, and how they depend on hardware system parameters and environmental conditions. Ultimately, this leads to a characterization of parameters that offer optimum performance for the overall GMTI radar system. While the information herein is not new to the literature, its collection into a single report hopes to offer some value in reducing the 'seek time'.
Doppler radars can distinguish targets from clutter if the target's velocity along the radar line of sight is beyond that of the clutter. Some targets of interest may have a Doppler shift similar to that of clutter. The nature of sea clutter is different in the clutter and exo-clutter regions. This behavior requires special consideration regarding where a radar can expect to find sea-clutter returns in Doppler space and what detection algorithms are most appropriate to help mitigate false alarms and increase probability of detection of a target. This paper studies the existing state-of-the-art in the understanding of Doppler characteristics of sea clutter and scattering from the ocean to better understand the design and performance choices of a radar in differentiating targets from clutter under prevailing sea conditions.
A Linear Frequency-Modulated (LFM) chirp is a function with unit amplitude and quadratic phase characteristic. In a focused Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image, a residual chirp is undesired for targets of interest, as it coarsens the manifested resolution. However, for undesired spurious signals, a residual chirp is often advantageous because it spreads the energy and thereby diminishes its peak value. In either case, a good understanding of the effects of a residual LFM chirp on a SAR Impulse Response (IPR) is required to facilitate system analysis and design. This report presents an analysis of the effects of a residual chirp on the IPR. As reference, there is a rich body of publications on various aspects of LFM chirps. A quick search reveals a plethora of articles, going back to the early 1950s. We mention here purely as trivia one of the earlier analysis papers on this waveform by Klauder, et al.
Trihedral corner reflectors are the preferred canonical target for SAR performance evaluation for many radar development programs. The conventional trihedrals have problems with substantially reduced Radar Cross Section (RCS) at low grazing angles, unless they are tilted forward, but in which case other problems arise. Consequently there is a need for better low grazing angle performance for trihedrals. This is facilitated by extending the bottom plate. A relevant analysis of RCS for an infinite ground plate is presented. Practical aspects are also discussed.
Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) radar maps echo data to range and range-rate, which is a function of a moving target's velocity and its position within the antenna beam footprint. Even stationary clutter will exhibit an apparent motion spectrum and can interfere with moving vehicle detections. Consequently it is very important for a radar to understand how stationary clutter maps into radar measurements of range and velocity. This mapping depends on a wide variety of factors, including details of the radar motion, orientation, and the 3-D topography of the clutter.
Angular orientation errors of the real antenna for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) will manifest as undesired illumination gradients in SAR images. These gradients can be measured, and the pointing error can be calculated. This can be done for single images, but done more robustly using multi-image methods. Several methods are provided in this report. The pointing error can then be fed back to the navigation Kalman filter to correct for problematic heading (yaw) error drift. This can mitigate the need for uncomfortable and undesired IMU alignment maneuvers such as S-turns.
There has been little interest in the information associated with the shadows in high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. In this paper we give an algorithm for the reconstruction of an object's shape from the shadows cast by the object in a sequence of SAR images. The algorithm is a back-projection type algorithm based on the intersection of solids. The effects of diffraction and synthetic aperture occlusion on SAR shadow resolution are also addressed.
Coherent Change Detection (CCD) is a technique for observing very subtle changes between two Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. It is an Interferometric processing technique that measures the coherence between two images, and denotes 'change' where coherence is not observed, and 'no change' where coherence is observed. Consequently, the strategy must be to form both images with as much initial coherence as possible, and then see where in spite of our best efforts coherence cannot be achieved. Many things contribute to destroying coherence, but we want to eliminate all sources except for temporal change in the scene being imaged itself. This requires that a number of variables in the data collection be well controlled, and that the processing must be adapted to mitigate the effects of residual imperfections to achieve maximum coherence. It must be emphasized that the coherence calculation, that is, calculating the actual CCD product from two images is the easy part. The hard part is making sure that the two input images have the underlying characteristics to yield a quality result. The purpose of this paper is to discuss "What it takes to get good CCD results.".
Demand is increasing for imaging ships at sea. Conventional SAR fails because the ships are usually in motion, both with a forward velocity, and other linear and angular motions that accompany sea travel. Because the target itself is moving, this becomes an Inverse- SAR, or ISAR problem. Developing useful ISAR techniques and algorithms is considerably aided by first understanding the nature and characteristics of ship motion. Consequently, a brief study of some principles of naval architecture sheds useful light on this problem. We attempt to do so here. Ship motions are analyzed for their impact on range-Doppler imaging using Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR). A framework for analysis is developed, and limitations of simple ISAR systems are discussed.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) performance testing and estimation is facilitated by observing the system response to known target scene elements. Trihedral corner reflectors and other canonical targets play an important role because their Radar Cross Section (RCS) can be calculated analytically. However, reflector orientation and the proximity of the ground and mounting structures can significantly impact the accuracy and precision with which measurements can be made. These issues are examined in this report.
It is well-known that Non-Linear FM (NLFM) chirp modulation can advantageously shape the transmitted signal's Power Spectral Density such that the autocorrelation function (i.e. matched filter output) exhibits substantially reduced sidelobes from its Linear FM (LFM) counterpart. Consequently, no additional filtering is required and maximum Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) performance is preserved. This yields a 1-2 dB advantage in SNR over the output of a LFM waveform with equivalent sidelobe filtering. However precision NLFM chirps are more difficult to design, produce, and process. This paper presents design and implementation techniques for Nonlinear FM waveforms. A simple iterative design procedure is presented that yields a NLFM phase/frequency function with the desired inherent sidelobe response. We propose to then generate the NLFM waveform by using a cascaded integrator/accumulator structure. Several specific architectures are examined to meet target performance criteria, including bandwidth constraints and sidelobe reduction goals. We first examine a fixed parameter set to generate a fixed polynomial phase function. Polynomial coefficients are selected to be constant during the pulse. Alternatively, a NLFM waveform can be generated via integrating a stepped parameter set, whereby parameters are constant over specific intervals, with the pulse width encompassing multiple intervals. The parameter changes in steps during the course of the pulse as a function of time. Alternatively yet, the parameter steps can be made a function of the pulse's instantaneous frequency.
A principal measure of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image quality is the manifestation in the SAR image of a spatial impulse, that is, the SAR's Impulse Response (IPR). IPR requirements direct certain design decisions in a SAR. Anomalies in the IPR can point to specific anomalous behavior in the radar's hardware and/or software.