Modified Range Resolution Improvement for Specular-Reflection Bistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging

Abstract

The specular-reflection bistatic synthetic aperture radar configuration (SBSC) has not been widely used because of two drawbacks: the ghost target phenomenon and ground range resolution degradation. Hence, to obtain a bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BISAR) image in the SBSC geometry, these two problems should be solved. The ghost target phenomenon can be overcome by setting an appropriate geometry for SBSC; however, overcoming ground range resolution degradation requires an additional solution. In this study, we propose a modified range resolution improvement (RRI) method to overcome the degradation of the ground range resolution of SBSC BISAR images. First, the ghost targetphenomenon is avoided by setting an appropriate SBSC geometry. Second, a modified RRI method suited for SBSC is proposed to improve the ground range resolution of SBSC BISAR images. The drawbacks of the SBSC can be overcome using the proposed method. Various simulations, including electromagnetic analysis, were implemented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the results show that the proposed method generates a much improved ground range resolution compared with existing methods. © 1965-2011 IEEE.