Experiments on a ground-based tomographic synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

This paper presents the development and experiment of three-dimensional image formation by using a ground-based tomographic synthetic aperture radar (GB-TomoSAR) system. GB-TomoSAR formulates two-dimensional synthetic aperture by the motion of antennae, both in azimuth and vertical directions. After range compression, three-dimensional image focusing is performed by applying Deramp-FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) algorithms, both in azimuth and vertical directions. Geometric and radiometric calibrations were applied to make an image cube, which is then projected into range-azimuth and range-vertical cross-sections for visualization. An experiment with a C-band GB-TomoSAR system with a scan length of 2.49 m and 1.86 m in azimuth and vertical-direction, respectively, shows distinctive three-dimensional radar backscattering of stable buildings and roads with resolutions similar to the theoretical values. Unstable objects such as trees and moving cars generate severe noise due to decorrelation during the eight-hour image-acquisition time.