"Stereo Radar": Reconstructing 3D data from 2D radar

Abstract

To improve the situation awareness of an aircrew during poor visibility, different approaches emerged during the past couple of years. Enhanced vision systems (EVS – based upon sensor images) are one of those. They improve situation awareness of the crew, but at the same time introduce certain operational deficits. EVS present sensor data which might be difficult to interpret especially if the sensor used is a radar sensor. In particular an unresolved problem of fast scanning forward looking radar systems in the millimeter waveband is the inability to measure the elevation of a target. In order to circumvent this problem effort was made to reconstruct the missing elevation from a series of images. This could be described as a „Stereo radar“-attempt and is similar to the reconstruction using photography (angle-angle images) from different viewpoints to rebuilt the depth information. Two radar images (range-angle images) with different bank angles can be used to reconstruct the elevation of targets. This paper presents the fundamental idea and the methods of the reconstruction. Furthermore, experiences with real data from EADS's “HiVision” MMCW radar are discussed. Two different approaches are investigated: First, a fusion of images with variable bank angles is calculated for different elevation layers and picture processing reveals identical objects in these layers. Those objects are compared regarding contrast and dimension to extract their elevation. The second approach compares short fusion pairs of two different flights with different nearly constant bank angles. Accumulating those pairs with different offsets delivers the exact elevation.