System Design and Imaging Verification of an Experimental Vehicle SAR/ISAR Based on Test & Measurement Instruments

Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) and Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar(ISAR), which are capable of producing high-quality microwave images in all day, all night and under all weather conditions, have great potential in both civil and military applications. However, due to long development period and high cost of the whole SAR/ISAR system, it´s very essential to develop a generalized test bed based on test& measurement instruments with characteristics of multi frequency, broad band, low cost, which is flexible and reconfigurable. Compared with air-borne and space-borne platforms, vehicle SAR/ISAR has the advantages of low cost, flexibility in both time and space, which can achieve high-resolution imaging of both stationary and moving targets. Due to its specific characteristics, it´s necessary to carefully design the system parameters before real vehicle SAR/ISAR systems are developed. Based on a set of self-contained parameters, ISAR experiments of both cooperative and non-cooperative moving targets are carried out. The real data are processed with motion compensation and imaging algorithms to demonstrate system parameters´ validity and system´s imaging ability.