Synthetic Aperture Radar Signal Processing Technique for Target Image Generation

Varun Gangwar1, Sumit Bansal1, Amit Kumar1, Sudhir Kumar Chaturvedi2, Ugur Guven3 and Pavan Kumar Nanduri2
1

B.Tech Avionics Engineering Student, Department of Aerospace Engineering 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, 3 Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun, India

varungangwar1920@gmail.com, sumitbansal1111@gmail.com, akky.antal@gmail.com 2 sudhir.chaturvedi@ddn.upes.ac.in,pknanduri@ddn.upes.ac.in 3 uguven@ddn.upes.ac.in

Abstract There are various types of Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) systems that are being used for several applications such as air and road traffic controlling, sports, weather, military reconnaissance and natural resources mapping and monitoring. . SAR is also known as imaging radar and it is being used as a remote sensor for mapping land and ocean surfaces features from aircraft and satellite platforms. It has many advantageous over optical remote sensing techniques due to its all weather capability, day-night ability and penetration into medium of the radar signals. Through aperture synthesis, it is possible to construct virtual antenna of a few kilometers and thereby increasing azimuth spatial resolution of SAR images from few kilometers to an order of a meter. SAR signals are stored in the form of inphase (I) and quadrature (Q) components. These signals are subjected to range and azimuth compression to generate SAR images. Basics of the SAR system, such as chirp properties, range and azimuth resolution, droppler centroid, PRF, synthetic aperture length, SAR system design, etc., is discussed. Numerical experiments were carried out using ERS-1 satellite data supplied by European Space Agency (ESA) showing that magnitude-phase algorithm provides us with more Compression Ratio attributes. The quantity of space borne SAR raw data is large, but the capability of on board data storage and down link bandwidth is limited. Therefore raw data must be compressed before downlink. These techniques are usually referred to as raw data compression, which are classified into three different categories according to the methods of quantization viz scalar, vector, and transform domain of compression. The result shows the good estimates of the signal processing techniques in the SAR image generation which can be utilized for the further applications over land and ocean based remote sensing such as enemy tank detection in military applications, illegal vessel target detection for maritime safety and security for the coast guards. The phase and magnitude information of the backscattering signals can also be utilized for the target velocity measurement. Keywords- Data Compression, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Range Compression, Compression Ratio

I. INTRODUCTION There are various types of radar used different application such as air traffic control, military and mapping etc [1].SAR is a imaging radar and it is being used as a remote sensor for mapping land and ocean surfaces. The first imaging radar, developed during World War II. In the 1950s, the Side Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR) was developed. It uses the relative motion between antenna and the target. Scanning had been achieved with the SLAR by fixed beam pointed to the side with aircrafts motion moving the beam across the land. But image formed by SLAR is poor in azimuth resolution and in SLAR with increasing altitude decreases the azimuthal resolution. So a very long antenna would be required to achieve a good resolution from a satellite. In airborne application the antenna size and weight are restricted. But another way of achieving better resolution from radar is signal processing. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a technique which uses the signal processing to improve the resolution [2]. In SAR, forward motion of actual antenna is used to synthesize a very long antenna.SAR has the possibility of using longer wavelengths and still achieving good resolution with antenna structures reasonable size. SAR is an active sensor, which provides its own source of illumination so it can operate in night or day. It is able to illuminate with variable look angle and can select wide area coverage. By proper selection the operating frequency, the microwave signal can penetrate clouds, rain, haze with little attenuation thus allows the operation in unfavorable weather condition [3]. SAR operates in pulse mode. SAR is usually mounted, on a moving platform such as an aircraft or spacecraft. SAR sends out signals towards an object in short duration and receives the reflected signal. By measuring the time duration between transmitted and received signal, distance between transmitter and object

can be obtained which is known as range. The speed of the object can also be determined by continuously tracking the object. For pulsed radars, transmitting and receiving antenna are the same. When the reflected echoes are analyzed using algorithm named range Doppler algorithm (RDA), they can generate an image with the high resolution. The RDA uses matched filtering to generate an image of target by the obtained noisy raw SAR signal. II. METHODOLOGY The flow chart for the image generation technique is as shown in Figure 1.

The data often has a radiometric variation in the range direction caused by several factors. The echo power is inversly proportional to the forth power of the slant range. The elevation beam pattern is not uniformly weighted. The reflectivity of the ground is a function of the beam incident angle. There is a geometrical term 1 sin which arise when the ground area is converted to an equivalent area. If the effect is not corrected,it may cause variation of intensities across the range swath in the processed image.

SAR Input Data [PRF, Time, Data type, Chirp Width, Frequency etc.]

Azimuth Compressed Signal

Range Compressed Signal

Range Doppler Algorithm (RDA)

Output Image

Figure. 1 SAR System Block Diagram A. RANGE DATA ACQUISITION The radar beam has a certain beam width which is called the "elevation beamwidth".the beam illuminates an area on the ground between "near range" and "far range".figure 2 shows how data is acquired across the range swath.at a propagation time, the pulse is transmitted as a wave front, between the two dashed lines in the figure. The pulse expands outward in concentric spheres ,at the speed of light.the lower dashed arc in the figure shows the pulse at the instant it reaches the ground,at a timet1 after it leaves the transmitting antenna. At time t2,a fraction of milliseconds later,the tailing edge of the pulse passes the "far range"point . Each point on the ground between near range and far range is illuminated by the beam for duration of Tr and is given in equation 1.

B. AZIMUTH DATA ACQUISITION As the sensor moves along its path, pulses are transmitted and received by radar. The pulses are transmitted every 1/PRF of a second, where PRF is Pulse Repetition Frequency. Since the sensor moves with the speed of Vs, Doppler Effect has to be taken into account. The received signal has the same waveform as the transmitted signal, but is much weaker and has a frequency shift because of sensors moving. The shift is governed by the speed of platform. Transmitted pulses are evenly spaced. When the radar is not transmitting it receives echoes reflected back from ground surface. C. RANGE DOPPLER ALGORITHM The Range Doppler Algorithm (RDA) was first developed in 1976-1978 for processing SEASAT SAR data. It used to digitally process space borne SAR image and it is the most widely used algorithm RDA operates in range and azimuth frequency domain, but it has the simplicity of one dimensional Operations. The reflected energy from areas on the earths surface in the same range but in different azimuth, are located on the same azimuth frequency. So, when this frequency is adjusted, the whole target areas with the same frequency (which means in the same range) are adjusted. The RDA performs matched filtering separately in the Fourier transformed range and azimuth domains. RDA uses the large difference in time scale of range and azimuth data and approximately separates processing in these two directions using Range Cell Migration Correction (RCMC). RCMC is performed in range frequency and azimuth frequency domain. Since, azimuth frequency is affected by Doppler Effect and azimuth frequency is bonded with Doppler frequency, it is called Range Doppler Algorithm. The main steps of RDA are: 1- Range compression 2- Azimuth FFT (transform to range Doppler domain) 3- RCMC 4- Azimuth filtering 5- Inverse FFT (return to range azimuth time domain)

Rg =

c 1 2 BR sin

(1)

Where Rg is the slant range resolution, is the incidence angle, c is the speed of light and BR is the frequency bandwidth of the transmitted radar pulse.

6- Image formation A block diagram of the RDA is shown in Figure 4. The raw signal space SAR input is the two-dimensional signal The two-dimensional signal is first analyzed as a series range time signals for each azimuth bin. Each range time signal undergoes matched filtering in the range frequency/azimuth time domain through range FFTs applied to the range time signals. After each signal is transformed back into the range time/azimuth time domain, the result is the range compressed signal as the matched filtering was performed in the range frequency domain. In order to obtain azimuth compression, azimuth matched filtering must be performed. The range compressed signal is then composed into a series of signals with respect to azimuth time at different range bins. Each azimuth signal is Fourier transformed via an azimuth FFT and RCMC is performed before azimuth matched filtering in the rangeDoppler domain. After azimuth matched filtering of each signal and azimuth inverse fast Fourier transforms (IFFTs), the final target image is obtained. The algorithm for the range filter is expressed in equation 2.

20 40 60 Azimuth 80 100 120 140 160

Noise clutter response

Generated Target Image from Raw signal Data

20

40

60

80 100 Range

120

140

160

Fig.2 Generated target image using RDA along with the noise response senses by the SAR sensor. Figure 1 shows the SAR raw data image generated and simulated in MATLAB based on the various sensor parameters such as the frequency, PRF, time rate, slow time rate. After the processing the simulated the target image signal is produced and result came out through the different window as shown in Figure 2. Ocean clutter response shows the different signal signature in SAR image due to low backscattering response. IV. CONCLUSION

f 2 RangeFilter = exp t K arc ( Ro f )

(2)

Where: f: frequency domain in range Karc (R0 , f): adjusted radar FM rate for secondary range compression according to slant range of first sample and frequency domain in azimuth.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Synthetic Aperture Radar is a signal processing technique for improving resolution beyond the beamwidth of antenna actually used in the radar system. This paper presents the synthetic aperture radar theory from generating signal to final image forming process. The properties in range and azimuth directions are shown as well as the response from the target is presented in order to collect receive data and store them in raw data .In SAR image formation number of approximations and simplifying assumptions were introduced. These make the formulas used in signal processing geometrically and so require corrections. The project is under progress and in future this can be extended for the generation of whole image data processing over the different sensor datasets. V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

20 40 60 Azimuth 80 100 120 140 160 20 40 60 80 Range 100 120 140 160

Target echoes

Background echoes

Fig.1. Generated image with noise in SAR image based on the aperture processing. The target shows the brighter response and clutter shows the lower brightness response.

The author (s) would like to thank University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun for providing the opportunity to write this research article. The corresponding author would like to thank Dr. C.S. Yang, Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute, Korea (Republic of) and Dr. P. Shanmugam, Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras for the support towards this research work

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