The tomographic formulation of spotlight mode synthetic aperture radar extended to three dimensional targets
In this paper we take a new look at the tomographic formulation of spotlight mode synthetic aperture radar (SAR), so as to include the case of targets having three-dimensional structure. This bridges the work of David C. Munson and his colleagues, who first described SAR in terms of two-dimensional tomography, with Jack Walker's original derivation of spotlight mode SAR imaging via Doppler analysis. The main result is to demonstrate that the demodulated radar return data from a spotlight mode collection represent a certain set of samples of the three-dimensional Fourier transform of the target reflectivity function, and to do so using tomographic principles instead of traditional Doppler arguments. We then show that the tomographic approach is useful in interpreting the two-dimensional SAR image of a three-dimensional scene. In particular, the well-known SAR imaging phenomenon commonly referred to as layover is easily explained in terms of tomographic projection. 4 refs.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 5127126
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-92-1045C; CONF-9209114--1; ON: DE92013666
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
New formulation for interferometric synthetic aperture radar for terrain mapping
Notes on Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Quality
Related Subjects
420200* -- Engineering-- Facilities
Equipment
& Techniques
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200 -- Mathematics & Computers
COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY
DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES
EQUATIONS
FOURIER TRANSFORMATION
IMAGE PROCESSING
INTEGRAL EQUATIONS
INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATIONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
PROCESSING
RADAR
RANGE FINDERS
SIGNALS
SYNTHETIC-APERTURE RADAR
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
TOMOGRAPHY
TRANSFORMATIONS