Slant range

Abstract: The slant range of a radar maneuvering target is usually modeled as a multivariate function in terms of its illumination time and multiple motion parameters. This multivariate range function includes the modulations on both the envelope and the phase of an echo of the coherent radar target and provides the foundation for radar target motion estimation. In this paper, the maximum likelihood estimators (MLE) are derived for motion estimation of a maneuvering target based on joint envelope and phase measurement, phase-only measurement and envelope-only measurement in case of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), respectively. It is shown that the proposed MLEs are to search the maximums of the outputs of the proposed generalized Radon-Fourier transform (GRFT), generalized Radon transform (GRT) and generalized Fourier transform (GFT), respectively. Furthermore, by approximating the slant range function by a high-order polynomial, the inherent accuracy limitations, i.e., the Cramer-Rao low bounds (CRLB), and some analysis are given for high order motion parameter estimations in different scenarios. Finally, some numerical experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Abstract: The Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) is one of the payload science instruments on the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission, which launched on August 3, 2004. The altimeter will measure the round-trip time of flight of transmitted laser pulses reflected from the surface of the planet that, in combination with the spacecraft orbit position and pointing data, gives a high-precision measurement of surface topography referenced to Mercury’s center of mass. MLA will sample the planet’s surface to within a 1-m range error when the line-of-sight range to Mercury is less than 1,200 km under spacecraft nadir pointing or the slant range is less than 800 km. The altimeter measurements will be used to determine the planet’s forced physical librations by tracking the motion of large-scale topographic features as a function of time. MLA’s laser pulse energy monitor and the echo pulse energy estimate will provide an active measurement of the surface reflectivity at 1,064 nm. This paper describes the instrument design, prelaunch testing, calibration, and results of postlaunch testing.

Abstract: The retrieval of above-ground biomass (AGB) in dense tropical forests using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is widely recognized as a challenging task. The first difficulty arises from the decrease of sensitivity of the backscattered intensity to biomass at high biomass values, often referred to as the backscatter saturation effect. At P-band, the decrease of sensitivity can occur at biomass values higher than about 300 t ha-1, e.g., those of many dense tropical forests. Another limiting factor is associated with the ground effects, as they can change significantly the magnitude of returns from vegetation-ground interactions. As a consequence, terrain topography or ground moisture status can determine the variations of the observed signal that are not due to forest biomass. A solution to reduce the ground effects is to have access to layers inside the forest canopy where the backscatter from vegetation-ground interactions is not significant. The study presented in this paper is an attempt to overcome the issues outlined above based on direct 3-D imaging of the forest volume, which is possible through multibaseline SAR tomography. In this way, forest biomass can be investigated by considering not only the backscattered power at each slant range and azimuth location but also its vertical distribution. The data analyzed in this paper are from the P-band airborne dataset acquired by Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales (ONERA) over French Guiana in 2009, in the frame of the European Space Agency campaign TropiSAR. The dataset is characterized by a favorable baseline distribution, resulting in a vertical resolution less than half the forest height, which made it possible to decompose the vertical distribution of the backscattered power into a number of layers by coherent focusing, i.e., without assuming any prior knowledge about the forest vertical structure. For each layer, the relationship between the backscattered power and forest AGB was then analyzed. As expected, it was found that the power from the bottom layer is very weakly correlated to AGB, whereas the power from a layer at about 30 m above the ground yields the best correlation and sensitivity to AGB in all polarizations, for actual AGB values ranging from 250 to 450 t ha-1. An interpretation of this result is also provided, based on a forest growth model simulation. Finally, the relevance of tomographic technique in P-band spaceborne mission is discussed.

Abstract: Airborne radar arrays oriented toward any direction other than sidelooking cause the range dependence of clutter. It is difficult to handle this range dependence problem in the presence of range ambiguity. Frequency diverse array (FDA) employs a small frequency increment across the array elements, which induces the spatial frequency variant with respect to slant range. Thus, it provides extra degrees-of-freedom in range domain. In this paper, a novel framework of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) radar is established with FDA as the transmit array. In the FDA-STAP radar, the range ambiguous clutter can be discriminated in spatial frequency domain. This is due to the fact that the spatial frequencies of the clutters from different slant ranges are distinguishable even though the range ambiguous clutter is within the same range bin. Simultaneously, the FDA-STAP radar induces secondary range dependence of clutter. To alleviate the secondary range dependence of clutter, a secondary range dependence compensation (SRDC) method is proposed for two cases: 1) the target is assumed in the unambiguous range region and 2) the target is assumed in the ambiguous range region. After the range ambiguous clutter is separated in the spatial frequency domain by using the proposed SRDC method, the traditional clutter compensation approach is applied to further align the spectrum distribution of clutter. Our simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach in clutter suppression under range ambiguous clutter scenarios.