New SAR system configuration for detection of buried objects

Abstract

The invention of the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) principle dates back to the early 1950s. The basic idea is to filter targets in a side looking radar according to their Doppler history in azimuth and by pulse or FM modulation compression in range. Since this time SAR systems have been, from a technical point of view, considerably refined to the state of the art where resolution and accuracy are close to the theoretical limits. This paper presents a new system idea for a single frequency SAR, where resolution is achieved by phase comparison. The system configuration becomes extremely simple and is suited for groundbased and airborne high resolution SAR.