Small and Short-Range Radar Systems

Chapter 4

Synthetic Aperture Radar

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was developed in the late 1950’s for the purpose of airborne ground mapping at a stand-off distance. This is valuable for military applications where an aircraft can be flying at a stand-off range and acquire a high precision ground map where each pixel corresponds to the relative location of the aircraft.

The radar is mounted onto an aircraft and acquires range profiles of a ground target scene at known increments (xn) along its flight path (Fig. 4.1) [1]. The radar’s field of view (FOV), determined by its antenna pattern, illuminates the target scene for each pulse. Each range profile is recorded and groups of range profiles are processed into an image. Within the imaging algorithm, ...