Bistatic SAR Imaging Processing and Experiment

results Using BeiDou-2/Compass-2 as Illuminator of

Opportunity and a Fixed Receiver
Tao Zeng, Tian Zhang, Weiming Tian*, Cheng Hu, Xiaopeng Yang
Beijing Key Laboratory of Embedded Real-time Information Processing Technology
Beijing Institute of Technology
Beijing, P.R. China
*Corresponding author: tianwei6779@163.com

AbstractGlobal Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) provides

opportunities for passive radar applications. This paper reports
progress in space-surface bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SSBiSAR) using Beidou-2 as transmitters of opportunity and a xed
ground-based receiver. Experiment is described and the obtained
SAR image is presented and interpreted in detail. Results show
that BiSAR using beidou-2 as illuminator is able to reflect
different types of targets and SS-BiSAR using GNSS as
illuminator of opportunity is potential to realize local area
monitoring.
Index TermsBistatic synthetic aperture radar (BSAR), global
navigation satellites systems (GNSSs), passive synthetic aperture
radar(SAR), Beidou-2/Compass-2.

I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1)
Bistatic Synthetic Aperture Radar (BiSAR) has advantages
over monostatic SAR in flexible geometric configuration, antijamming ability, high SNR and easiness in interferometry SAR
processing. The transmitter can be dedicated SAR radar
satellites or any other illuminators of opportunity such as TV
station [1], WiMAX emitter [2] or Global Navigation Satellite
System (GNSS) [3]. Space-surface BiSAR (SS-BiSAR),
composed of a space-borne transmitter and a ground-based
receiver, is the most common bistatic SAR system for its
simplicity and convenience, and thus has attracted more and
more attention in the last few years [4][5][6].
Passive radar with GNSS as transmitter is promising to
implement continuously monitoring targets of interest as the
GNSS signal is available in nearly any outdoor places and in
any time. Besides large area coverage and excellent time
continuality, merits of this kind of system also include easiness
of synchronization and real time availability of ephemeris.
Researches on the power budget [7], resolution analysis [8],
synchronization [9] and image formation algorithm [10] have
been carried out and plenty of BiSAR images [11][12] were
obtained which validated the feasibility in both theoretical and
practical level. However, the quality of these images can be
hardly compared with their counterparts using dedicated SAR

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IEEE

radar satellite as transmitter due to the low emission power and

narrow bandwidth of GNSS signal.
In this paper, we focus on SS-BiSAR using Beidou-2 as
illuminators and a fixed ground-based receiver. CA code of
Beidou-2 has wider bandwidth than that of other GNSS
systems, and compared to the Galileo with the same bandwidth,
Beidou-2 has more constellations, especially in Asia region,
which brings benefit to experiment geometry design with
respect to the best resolution performance. A scene with
various types of targets was selected to test the SS-BiSAR
imaging ability.
The discussion begins with a brief introduction to the
system setup and processing algorithm. Subsequently, an
experiment was discussed and the results were introduced and
interpreted in detail. Finally this paper was concluded.
II. SYSTEM SETUP AND PROCESSING ALGORITHM
Basic topology of SS-BiSAR is presented in Fig. 1. Figure
2 shows the architecture of receiver, where two channels were
constructed consisting of a radar channel (RC) and a direct
signal receiving channel (DC). The RC is employed to receive
echo from the scene, which contains information of scatterers,
while the DC is dedicated to receive the direct signal from the
satellite, which will be utilized to implement the signal
synchronization and navigation messages extraction. The
navigation messages embody the time when the signal is
transmitted and the ephemeris parameters of satellite. Thus the
trajectory of the satellite can be calculated through Kepler
equations. RC and DC share a common frequency signal and
sampling clock to ensure synchronization error identity, which
is the precondition for synchronization processing.
As different geometric relationships lead to various
resolutions distribution of BiSAR image, to attain fine
resolution performance, the experiment time should be
specifically designed based on the satellite position and
trajectory with respect to the scene and receiver location.
Usually, the bistatic angle should be less than 90 then a back
scatter geometric relationship is constructed and the trajectory
of satellite should be as perpendicular to the centric beam of

302

the receiver antenna as possible to make the directions of

azimuth and range be separated apart distinctly in the final
focused image.
Figure 3 presents a brief flowchart of processing algorithm.
The main idea is to utilize the direct signal to implement
synchronization based on error cancellation principle and
extract geometry parameter to achieve image focusing through
fast back projection algorithm. The details can be referred in
our previous publication [13].

III. EXPERIMENT RESULT AND ANALYSIS

An experiment was conducted in a college in Zhuhai, China.
The receiver was located in the top of a high building. Targets
for imaging comprise a football field, a basketball field, a train
station and some buildings, etc., as depicted in Fig. 4.
After data processing by proposed method, a focused
BiSAR image is obtained and shown in Fig. 5. For comparison,
the corresponding Google Earth map is also shown in Fig. 5.
Some outline information can be observed in the result. The
most prominent object is the football field surrounded by
rectangle iron net, along with the grass inside, forming a dark
region with a bright frame.

Fig. 1. Geometry of SS-BiSAR

Radar Antenna
Radar Channel
Mixer

LNA

IF Amp
BPF

LO

BPF

Power
Divider

Synchronization
Antenna

Frequency
Synthesizer

A/D

LO

LNA
BPF

IF Amp

Mixer

BPF

Direct Signal Receiving Channel

Fig. 2. Architecture of receiver end

Echo data

Direct signal
Frequency
offset history

PRT partition

navigation message
extraction

Azimuth jumped
Range compression
Range migration
history estimation

Fig. 4. Scene of experiment

Satellite position
history calculation
Time
synchronization

As depicted in Fig. 6, the Y shape road is also clear in

SAR image. Due to the small scatter coefficient of road itself,
the road area forms a dark region and it can be inferred that the
vegetation besides forms the outline by the assistance of optical
map.

Time
synchronization
Range compression

Range compression

Peak phase
extraction

Frequency
synchronization
BP
Focused image

Fig. 3. Processing algorithm

South

South

West

West

Fig. 5. Imaging result

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)

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synthetic time is around 900s, achieving an azimuth resolution

around 1.8m. The asymmetry of range and azimuth resolutions
results in long-stripe like profiles of targets. In addition, the
imaging area is circumscribed by the low signal noise ratio
(SNR). In the BiSAR image, the main observable targets are all
within about 900m from the receiver position.
IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
An experiment in a scene with various types of targets has
been conducted and BiSAR image has been obtained through
proposed methods. The BiSAR image has been investigated
and interpreted in detail by assistance of optical photos and
Google Earth map. The result shows that SS-BiSAR using
GNSS as transmitter is able to reflect different types of objects
including distributed objects like roads outlined by trees, weak
scatter objects like football field grass, and even some tiny
isolated objects like basketball stands. Therefore this kind of
system can be applied to implement local area monitoring.
However, some key problems that limit the performances still
need to be solved, such as how to improve the SNR to extend
the observable area, and how to improve the range resolution to
ameliorate the image quality. As each GNSS satellite has
multiple separated frequency band, there is a possibility to
synthesize these bands together and thus one of our future
works is to research on algorithm about multi-band
combination to improve the range resolution. Another work
that can be done is to conduct experiments with longer dwell
time to increase the image SNR and broaden area of observable
scene.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 6. Imaging result of a road

2 basketball stands

This work was supported by the National Natural Science

Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61120106004, 61427802,
61225005), Chang Jiang Scholars Program (T2012122) and
was also supported by 111 project of China under Grant
B14010.
REFERENCES

Fig. 7. Imaging result of basketball stands

Two fields with rectangle outline in the east of the football

field are also clear in Fig. 6. There is nothing inside the
southern one so its profile is an inner-empty rectangle, while
there are some basketball stands in the northern field, and
hence some isolated points can be observed in the area, as is
shown in Fig. 7. This example shows that SS-BiSAR image
using GNSS has certain ability to reflect tiny isolated objects.
Nevertheless, the image quality is affected by the range
resolution, which is mainly limited by the signal bandwidth. In
this example, the signal bandwidth is about 20MHz,
corresponding to about 13m range resolution, while the

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