Validation of MA-ATI SAR Theory Using Numerical Simulation for Estimating the Direction of Moving Targets and Ocean Currents

Abstract

A theory of multiaperture along-track interferometric (MA-ATI) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was previously proposed to estimate the velocity vector of moving targets by utilizing conventional ATI SAR data. In the MA-ATI SAR method, multi/sublook processing is applied to both the raw data acquired by the fore-and-aft antennas, yielding two sets of forward-looking images and two sets of backward-looking images. From the interferograms of corresponding directions, two velocity components can be estimated, and hence the moving directions of a target are also obtained. The velocity vector is calculated by combining the estimated moving direction with the velocity in the range direction measured by the conventional ATI method. In order to show initial validation of this theory, a numerical SAR simulator, which has a function to produce a time series SAR raw data, was further developed to simulate MA-ATI SAR by taking into account the multilook processing. In the present validation study, this simulator (in time-domain processing) was applied to estimate the moving directions of a moving point target and ocean currents in the case of an airborne radar system. In particular, the effect on the subaperture azimuth beam angle was discussed since it is a key factor for the estimation. The preliminary results demonstrated that the estimation accuracy exhibited a direction error of 5°–10° for both the moving target and ocean currents, respectively, when half of the subaperture azimuth beam angle was larger than 1.25°.