A Short Range Synthetic Aperture Imaging Radar with Rotating Antenna

Abstract

A Short Range Synthetic Aperture Imaging Radar with Rotating AntennaThe design of a short range synthetic aperture imaging radar is introduced in this paper. A radar hologram is acquired using a small omnidirectional antenna that is mounted on a rotating platform. After each turn of the platform a high resolution 360° 2D image is reconstructed; a rotating window function optimizes the reconstructed image function to get the best image focus for detecting both weak and strong scatterers. The rotating window function depends on the target direction and is executed for each image point and each target direction. The size of the synthetic aperture - and thus the lateral resolution of the imaging system - is determined by the diameter of the circular antenna trajectory. In contrast to common radar scanner concepts that utilize highly directional and thus bulky antennas, the proposed scanner concept has the advantage of using a small, lightweight omni-directional antenna. The developed radar system is much more compact and the scanning mechanics are significantly simplified. Furthermore, an omni-directional antenna offers very straightforward options for powering the radar on the rotation platform. Measurement results obtained with a 24 GHz FMCW short range radar sensor illustrate the performance of the proposed SAR imaging method.