Aircraft-borne interferometric SAR for 3-D high-resolution radar imaging

The technique of interferometric synthetic aperture radar has been developed over the past decade or so to enable the production of topographic maps for geophysical purposes from repeat passes of satellite-borne SAR data, and impressive results have been obtained from the SARs carried by the SEASAT and ERS-1 satellites. The spatial resolution of such data is of the order of 20 m. An extension of this technique uses aircraft-borne SAR, at rather higher resolution, giving the potential of three-dimensional imaging, and hence ultimately detection and recognition of specific target types. The paper describes the basis of this technique, and presents some preliminary results obtained from an aircraft-borne system