摘要 |
A radar imaging system is provided that directly measures the spatial frequency components of a scene via digital-beam-forming techniques applied along the cross-track dimension. Separate transmit and receive antennas provide increased integration time for the receive function, thus improving the signal-to-noise ratio. A segmented receive antenna is employed and processed as a series of interferometers sensitive to spatial frequency components of the scene corresponding to the separation between pairs of antenna elements. Range gating is used in the along-track dimension to divide the return from an illuminated swath into multiple range bins that may be processed independently. The system provides an improved signal-to-noise ratio and lends significant flexibility to the image formation process, improving the quality of the radar imaging. An embodiment having multiple transmit antennas is also provided that enables the generation of three-dimensional stereoscopic radar images.
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