An Introduction to Synthetic Aperture Radar

Resolution
Sahand Noorizadeh
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia 30332–0250
Email: sahand@gatech.edu

Abstract—This paper is the final project report of the Intro-

duction to Radar and Electromagnetic Remote Sensing (ECE
4390) course in Spring 2010 at Georgia Institute of Technology

I. I NTRODUCTION
The common perception of radar is a stationary rotating
antenna that produces signals representing moving objects. A
commonly refereed type of radar is the airport surveillance
radar. A less known type of radar is the imaging radar.
The idea of imaging radars is not too different from the
airport surveillance radars. In imaging radars, the objects are
usually stationary and the radar is what is in motion and
also the objective is to capture a two-dimensional topographic
image. In simple terms, they are non-optical cameras. Imaging
radars have been used in many applications for mapping the
Earth and other planets with optically opaque atmospheres
and monitoring changes on the ground surfaces of interest to
geologists and many other military applications.
Synthetic aperture radars (SAR’s) are imaging radars that
by taking advantage of the motion of the radar and utilizing
sophisticated signal processing, limitations imposed by physi-
cal and electrical constraints are improved. SAR’s are able to
extract two-dimensional images of an area of a surface (target)
from the received signals with very high resolution.
This paper provides a brief introduction to synthetic aperture
radar resolution and its related parameters.
II. SAR C ONCEPTS
The simple geometry of SAR is shown in Figure 1. Where η
is the relative time with respect to the instant that the target first
becomes visible to the antenna beamwidth, R0 is the shortest
range between the sensor and the target, and Vs is the velocity
of the sensor or the footprint.
The concept of SAR resolution will be discussed in detail
in the following section but it suffices at this point to point out
that the narrower the width of the footprint along the azimuth
the finer the resolution of the width of the image (there’s also
another resolution along the signal which will be discussed
in the next section). Assuming a stationary radar in the sky,
the width of the footprint is determined by the azimuth 3-dB
beamwidth of the antenna and is given by Eq. 1.
Rλ
ρra ≈ RθB = (1)
D
Fig. 1. SAR geometery.
Where the subscript ra denotes the resolution due to the real
aperture of the antenna, D, R is the range between the center
of the footprint and the antenna, and λ is the wavelength of
the transmitted frequency. Even for high-frequency radars with
large antenna aperture, ρra is a few kilometers which is hardly
enough to resolve a few blocks of a city. Synthetic aperture
radars exploit the forward motion of the platform (radar carrier
such as an airplane or a satellite) with the help of advanced
digital signal processing to synthesize a large antenna aperture
which in turn increases the range resolution (compress the
footprint width along the azimuth axis) without unrealistically
large antenna apertures. Carl Wiley who was the first person
to describe the concept of SAR named this technique Doppler
Beam Sharpernning [1].
III. SAR R ESOLUTION
There are two resolutions associated with the SAR image:
Crossrange (or azimuth) resolution which determines the
width of a resolvable area along the direction of the radar
motion and Range resolution which determines the minimum
separation of two resolvable objects inside the footprint along
the radiating beam. Figure 2 shows these resolutions inside
the footprint. Synthetic aperture radars use two different tech-
niques to improve these two resolutions. The concept behind
these techniques are discussed next.
A. Range Resolution
Ignoring the motion of the radar for the moment, along
the radiation line, SAR is mainly a range detection radar
which transmits a train of pulses with a certain pulse repetition
frequency (PRF) and receives a time delayed version of the
original signals determined by the range between the radar
and the targets. Figure 3 shows the geometry of SAR with the
range on the x-axis.
Fig. 2. Crossrange and Range resolutions of the SAR.
Fig. 3. Geometry of the SAR Range resolutions.
If τp is the duration of one of the transmitted pulses, then
the length of the area on the ground illuminated by that pulse
is the range resolution and is given by Eq. 2.
cτp
ρr = (2)
2 sin(θ)
Where c is the speed of light and θ is the look angle. Eq. 2
shows that the range resolution is independent of the range.
One way to improve the range resolution (i.e. shorten ρr ) is
to decrease the pulse duration τp but this would reduce the
average transmitted power which in turn would degrade the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To compensate for this loss, the
peak power needs to be increased but there are limitations to
this as well.
Pulse compression is the technique used in Synthetic Aper-
ture Radars to shorten the transmitted pulse τp . The idea
behind the pulse compression is to keep the pulse duration the
same but divide it into shorter pulses, δτp , detectable by the
signal processor. To explain how this can be achieved, it would
be simpler to start from analyzing this from the frequency
domain. In most radar systems, only a single-frequency carrier
signal is modulated with a rectangular pulse of duration τp
seconds. The bandwidth of this modulated signal is B ≈ 1/τp .
If instead of a single-frequency carrier, N successive step
carrier frequencies ∆f Hz apart are modulated with the
same rectangular pulse, then the waveform bandwidth becomes
B = (N − 1)∆f ≫ 1/τp . Then the effective pulse duration
is 1/B. In practice, step frequencies are not used for SAR’s.
Instead, a continuous linear sweep of frequency also known as
the Linear Frequency Modulation (LFM) is used [2]. Figure 4
shows the waveform of a pulsed modulated LFM signal.
Fig. 4. Pulse modulated LFM waveform.
The waveform equation, bandwidth, and the instantaneous
frequency of an LFM signal is given by Eqs. 3, 4, and 5
respectively.
{ ( )}
s(t) = cos 2π fc t + kt2 /2 (3)
B = kt (4)
f (t) = fc + kt (5)
Where −τp /2 ≤ t ≤ τp /2, k is the chirp rate of the
waveform, and fc is the center frequency. Using the Pulse
Compression technique means that every scatterer inside along
the length ρr in Figure 3 backscatters a different frequency.
This simply means that each frequency represnts a ”point”
along ρr . At the receiver end, matched filters are used to
extract the backscattered LFM signals from the noise and other
unwanted propagation effects.
B. Crossrange Resolution
In Figure 5, scatterers M1 and M2 both have the same
ranges but they are separated in the azimuth (parallel to the
flight path) direction. Using the backscattered waves alone, the
azimuth resolution is given by Eq. 6.
Rλ
ρa = (6)
l
Where R is the range, l is the length or diameter of the
antenna aperture, and λ is the career wavelength. Therefore,
there are three ways to improve the crossrange resolution (i.e.
reduce ρa ). Decreasing the altitude of the flying platform can
be done to a certain level. In spaceborne applications, this may
not even be an option since the altitude determines the velocity
of the spacecraft. Increasing the frequency is an option and is
often used in modern SAR’s but complexity of the RF system
at higher frequency would eventually impose its limits as well.
Finally, the physical aperture of the antenna would need to be
impractically very large to have a significant contribution to
the crossrange resolution.
SAR’s exploit the motion of the platform to separate two
scatterers of the same range that are inside the footprint at the
same time. Scatterers M1 and M2 of Figure 5 have angular
separation of θ2 − θ1 and each with radial velocities given
by Eqs. 7. This leads to a Doppler frequency shift from the
carrier frequency for each target velocity given by Eq. 8.
Fig. 5. Top view of two scatterers of the same range inside the footprint.
vr1 = vs cos(θ1 ) (7a)
vr2 = vs cos(θ2 ) (7b)
2vr
fD = (8)
λ
It now becomes up to the smallest detectable Doppler fre-
quency shift to determine the crossrange resolution. Figure 6
shows how a target enters the 3-dB beamwidth of the antenna
and remains illuminated until it exits the beamwidth. The
Fig. 6. Target illumination and the synthetic aperture.
Doppler frequency shifts can be found by spectral analysis
using a Fourier transform. To do this, the SAR system takes
a Te -second window of the illumination time and performs a
FT on it. Therefore, the smallest detectable Doppler frequency
is given by Eq. 9.
kr
δfD = (9)
Te
Where kr is close to 1 and is a coefficient that depends on
the quality of the processing [3]. Using the Doppler frequency
shift detection, the improved crossrange resolution is given by
Eq. 10.
kr λR
ρa = (10)
2vTe sin(θ)
Where v is the velocity of the platform. This equation shows
that the best resolution is achieved when the center of the
beamwidth and the target are directly pointed at each other.
Another way of realizing how SAR’s improve the cross-
range resolution is noting that multiple backscatter signals with
different Doppler frequency shifts from the same scatterer is
collected during the illumination time window. Using a signal
processing algorithm that iterates through the power-Doppler
history frequency as shown in Figure 7, the maximum received
power and zero Doppler points for each target can be found
to separate that target from other scatterers. Having multiple
data for the same target also improves the SNR [4].
Fig. 7. Power-Doppler history plot.
C. Synthesizing Antenna Aperture
In the geometry of Figure 6, the length along the azimuth
direction that the target is illuminated is given by Eq. 11.
Lsynth = vTe sin(θsynth ) (11)
Where Te is the total target illumination time and v is the
velocity of the platform. Eq. 10 can be re-written as
kr λR λR
ρa = ≈ (12)
2Lsynth 2Lsynth
The azimuth beamwidth of an antenna is θB ≈ λ/l. Where l
is the length of the antenna aperture. From Eq. 12, it can seen
that the improved resolution could have also been achieved
using an antenna with aperture length of 2Lsynth . Therefore,
SAR’s synthesize a very large antenna aperture using a small
antenna aperture hence the name Synthetic Aperture Radar.
R EFERENCES
[1] C. Wiley, Synthetic aperture radars, IEEE Transactions Aerospace and
Electronic Systems, vol. AES-21, pp. 440, May 1985.
[2] Sullivan, Roger, Radar Handbook, 3rd ed., Sec. 17.4
[3] Lacomme, Hardange, Marchias, and Normant, Air and Spaceborne Radar
Systems - An Introduction, p. 235.
[4] I. Skolnik, Merrillm, Introduction to Radar Systems, 3rd ed., p. 45.