Generalised ambiguity function analysis of distributed MIMO synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

The abundant space, time, frequency and code resources of distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) enables it to bring various applications. The generalised ambiguity function (GAF) of distributed MIMO SAR is analysed. By equating the bistatic SAR to equivalent phase centre (EPC), the GAF can be expressed as sum of that of mostatic SAR. The influence of EPC's position on GAF is analysed, including its effects on amplitude items in range direction, in azimuth direction and phase item, and the boundary conditions of formation scale within which the envelope items are not affected are deduced. Furthermore, the phase in GAF is expressed as linear combinations of EPC position related to formation centre. The simulation results verify the negligibility of formation scale and show that the linear combination expression is accurate enough to evaluate the resolution.

Keywords

• synthetic aperture radar
• MIMO radar
• mostatic SAR
• GAF
• amplitude items
• range direction
• azimuth direction
• formation scale
• envelope items
• EPC position
• formation centre
• linear combination expression
• generalised ambiguity function analysis
• distributed MIMO synthetic aperture radar
• code resources
• distributed synthetic aperture radar
• distributed SAR
• bistatic SAR
• equivalent phase centre
• space resources
• frequency resources
• time resources