Velocity effects in synthetic apertures

An antenna capable of high resolution can be synthesized by moving a side-looking radar a long distance and treating positions along the path as the positions of elements in an actual physical array. Important characteristics of such synthetic-aperture radar systems and the effect of target motion on their resolution have been considered. If the motion of the target is known, a transformation can he made in which the target appears stationary, and the relative motion between target and radar determines the effective synthetic aperture. However, if the assumed velocity of the target differs from its actual velocity, the velocity error will cause an apparent displacement of the target and a degradation of the performance of the radar. The effect of velocity errors was considered.