Motion compensation of short-range, wide-beam synthetic aperture radar

Abstract. Up to now, SAR systems are a well known possibility for long-range detection. Applying them for short-range applications with wide-beam antennas, of course, does not increase the resolution but the probability to detect hidden targets with an anisotropic radar cross section significantly in comparison to other detection systems. Working with an appropriate wavelength even improves the possiblity to look through natural cover like grass. An application is detecting fawn while pasture mowing. The main issue in such applications is the antenna's motion in range direction as it is carried by cars or traction engines. If motion is not compensated, the phase cannot be reconstructed correctly, the resolution gets poorer and, in worst case, the target even disappears. Conventional methods for motion compensation either fail for wide beam antennas, since for contributions of wide angles the phase reconstruction is incorrect, or is not applicable for realtime data processing, because the processing time due to interpolation or similar steps is very high. We present a method of image reconstruction regarding motion of the antenna as well as wide beamwidth. This method is analyzed concerning processing time in comparison to the conventional image reconstruction. In our system we use a combination of algorithms. There is shown a comparison for different algorithms dependent of the antenna's motion and aperture angle.