Apparatus and method for producing three-dimensional images

摘要

An apparatus and method is capable of acquiring useful three-dimensional radar images from an aircraft which travels in a curvilinear path to generate only a sparsely filled synthetic array. A motion measurement unit outputs position measurements as the aircraft travels in the curvilinear path. The system includes a motion compensation and timing unit and a wave transmitter which outputs chirped radar signals. An antenna coupled to the wave generator sends the chirped radar signals to a region to be imaged and receives scattered chirped radar return signals from scatterers in the region. These scattered signals are coherently mixed to baseband and digitized before being input to a processor. The processor includes a range processing unit, a memory unit and an estimator. The range processor receives and Fourier transforms the digitized return signals to obtain range profiles. The estimator completes the image formation process by three-dimensional back projection of the range profiles. It also estimates the location and complex strengths of scatterers and uses these to generate a side lobe free image.