Airborne Bistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar

Kurzfassung

In this chapter, the authors address specifically airborne bistatic SAR. The potential objectives of such systems or acquisition campaigns are first described with respect to civilian and military applications. One remarkable point about a bistatic airborne experiment is the freedom in the choice of geometric configuration, ranging from parallel flying to crossing trajectories. One section illustrates this diversity by presenting the performances associated a selection of interesting bistatic configurations. Airborne bistatic SAR processing is then developed with a dedicated section specifically on motion compensation, an essential step when processing airborne data. A review of the previous bistatic airborne SAR campaigns is provided followed by a complete description of the ONERA- DLR airborne bistatic SAR campaign. The experiment planning consisting in the selection of the acquisition geometry, frequency, bandwidth is described step by step. The data acquisition, processing and calibration are then detailed. Comparison between images acquired with different bistatic angles is discussed. Bistatic interferometric datasets were acquired and successfully processed. Two examples are provided as an illustration.