SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (SAR) SIGNAL SIMULATION USING RANGE DOPPLER ALGORITHM (RDA)

Abstract

In this paper, a brief working principle of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) will be covered. The details of the range Doppler algorithm (RDA) will be studied including the mathematical models of the involved transmitted and received signals as well as the algorithm. The implementation and algorithm development of the RDA will be carried out in MATLAB. The processing steps of the RDA will be illustrated in detail together with the SAR raw signal simulation as point targets and its mathematical
models. Several SAR signal properties will be highlighted as these parameters are relatively important in order to develop the algorithm for focusing SAR data. Analytical expressions of baseband SAR signal that consist of point targets are derived and they are used to generate the SAR raw data in MATLAB for further SAR processing. The derivation of the expressions allows the design of the matched filters that are used in range compression and azimuth compression in the RDA in order to process the SAR raw data. The SAR raw data will be processed by using the developed RDA
and will be illustrated in the form of SAR images.
Keywords: Synthetic aperture radar (SAR); range Doppler algorithm (RDA); signal modelling; SAR simulation; SAR image formation.

Description