Laboratory multistatic 3D SAR with polarimetry and sparse aperture sampling

Abstract

With the advent of constellations of SAR satellites, and the possibility of swarms of SAR UAV's, there is increased interest in multistatic SAR image formation. This may provide advantages including allowing three-dimensional image formation free of clutter overlay; the coherent combination of bistatic SAR geometries for improved image resolution; and the collection of additional scattering information, including polarimetric. The polarimetric collection may provide useful target information, such as its orientation, polarisability, or number of interactions with the radar signal; distributed receivers would be more likely to capture any bright specular responses from targets in the scene, making target outlines distinct. Highlight results from multistatic polarimetric SAR experiments at the Cranfield University GBSAR laboratory are presented, illustrating the utility of the approach for fully sampled 3D SAR image formation, and for sparse aperture SAR 3D point-cloud generation with a newly developed volumetric multistatic interferometry algorithm.