Virtual Antenna Array Analysis for MIMO Synthetic Aperture Radars

[摘要] Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that employs multiple antennas totransmit orthogonal waveforms and multiple antennas to receive radar echoes is a recently proposed remote sensing concept. Ithas been shown that MIMO SAR can be used to improve remote sensing system performance. Most of the MIMO SAR researchso far focused on signal/data models and corresponding signal processing algorithm. Little work related to MIMO SAR antennaanalysis can be found. One of the main advantages of MIMO SAR is that the degrees of freedom can be greatly increasedby the concept of virtual antenna array. In this paper, we analyze the virtual antenna array for MIMO SAR high-resolutionwide-swath remote sensing applications. The one-dimensional uniform and nonuniform linear antenna arrays are investigatedand their application potentials in high-resolution wide-swath remote sensing are introduced. The impacts of nonuniformspatial sampling in the virtual antenna array are analyzed, along with a multichannel filtering-based reconstruction algorithm. Conceptual system and discussions are provided. It is shown that high operation flexibility and reconfigurability can be obtained byutilizing the virtual antenna arrays provided by the MIMO SAR systems, thus enabling a satisfactory remote sensing performance.

[学科分类] 电子、光学、磁材料