Dual-Chirp-Rate Waveforms for Range Ambiguity Blurring

Abstract

Waveform diversity is effective for blurring range ambiguities of strong scatterers in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and of particular interest for some novel high-resolution wide-swath ambiguous SAR modes, where multiple orders of ambiguities are received simultaneously and without antenna pattern attenuation. While significant developments have been made in the design of orthogonal SAR waveforms, designing a large number of waveforms with desired correlation properties is still an open problem. This work aims at designing a set of a given number of waveforms, e.g., eight, that minimize the maximum value of cross-correlation peaks, under the assumption that all waveforms can only contain one frequency at a given time. We present some solutions that are based on dual-chirp-rate waveforms. The analysis gives insights on general methodologies to design a large number of waveforms characterized by low cross-correlation.