Performance improvements in MIMO SAR

It is natural to approach multi-channel SAR in terms of spatial diversity concepts developed for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communications and recent advances in MIMO radar. We introduce the MIMO SAR concept in this paper, and the goal here is to research the concept and potential design of a new SAR application based on MIMO theory and techniques. MIMO technology which were develop originally for wireless communication, can improve the data rate and/or the reliability of communications over fading channels using multiple transmit and receive antennae. The proposed MIMO SAR exploits the independence between signals at the array elements as same as MIMO communication. By spacing the antenna elements at the transmitter and at the receiver such that the MIMO SAR can handle target RCS fading, scintillations and glint by virtue of the incoherent processing gain due to the spatial diversity of target scatterers opening the way to a variety of new techniques that can improve SAR performance.