ISAR imaging with FMCW multichannel airborne SAR

Abstract

This paper investigates the benefits of multichannel processing for inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging. There are potential advantages of multichannel processing in radar systems, for example, improved motion estimation, clutter suppression, extraction of supporting information, such as sea wave direction and speed, and ship wake imaging. The current study focuses on two multichannel techniques, namely the oceanic displaced phase centre antenna (ODPCA) and the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) techniques, to suppress (ambiguous) clutter and enhance focused target responses even in the proximity of other target responses. These techniques are validated using experimental multichannel radar data from an airborne measurement campaign in a maritime environment.