Synthetic Aperture Hitchhiker Imaging

We introduce a novel synthetic-aperture imaging method for radar systems that rely on sources of opportunity. We consider receivers that fly along arbitrary, but known, flight trajectories and develop a spatio-temporal correlationbased filtered-backprojection-type image reconstruction method. The method involves first correlating the measurements from two different receiver locations. This leads to a forward model where the radiance of the target scene is projected onto the intersection of certain hyperboloids with the surface topography. We next use microlocal techniques to develop a filtered-backprojection-type inversion method to recover the scene radiance. The method is applicable to both stationary and mobile, and cooperative and non-cooperative sources of opportunity. Additionally, it is applicable to non-ideal imaging scenarios such as those involving arbitrary flight trajectories, and has the desirable property of preserving the visible edges of the scene radiance. We present a...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TIP
• Authors: Can Evren Yarman, Birsen Yazici
• Keywords: Flight Trajectories, Image Reconstruction Method, Scene Radiance, TIP 2008