Collaborative forward-looking imaging and reconnaissance technology for manned/unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

With the imaging advantage of bistatic forward-looking synthetic aperture radar, collaborative forward-looking imaging and reconnaissance technology for manned/unmanned aerial vehicles could be performed, in which unmanned aerial vehicle can realise two-dimensional (2-D) and high-resolution imaging and further attacking targets in its straight-ahead position. However, there exists more complicated space-variance property in this special configuration than traditional mono-static SAR. Such property will lead to performance deterioration of imaging if not corrected effectively. To address this problem, 2-D frequency spectrum with high precision is first obtained based on squint minimisation method here, and then a novel-phase space-variance correction method is developed through polynomial fitting. Imaging focus performance on targets could be improved significantly with authors’ method. Several simulations for scattering targets confirm its validity.

Keywords

• autonomous aerial vehicles
• minimisation
• synthetic aperture radar
• radar imaging
• Doppler radar
• remotely operated vehicles
• reconnaissance technology
• imaging advantage
• synthetic aperture radar
• unmanned aerial vehicle
• high-resolution imaging
• complicated space-variance property
• traditional mono-static SAR
• novel-phase space-variance correction method
• imaging focus performance