Design of a Near-Field Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging System Based on Improved RMA

• Published in: Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 16; no. 17; p. 3342
• Main Authors: Li, Yongcheng, Xu, Huaqiang, Xu, Jiawei, Chen, Hao, An, Qiying, Hou, Kangming, Wang, Jingjing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 09.09.2024
• Subjects: Algorithms; Amplitudes; Approximation; Clutter; coverings; Data imaging; Decoupling; Efficiency; Electromagnetic radiation; high resolution; Image enhancement; Image quality; Image resolution; IMRMA; Information systems; Interpolation; Methods; near field; Near fields; Network analysers; Radar; Radar imaging; SAR; Scanners; Spherical waves; Synthetic aperture radar; VNA; Wave propagation; Wave scattering
• DOI: 10.3390/rs16173342
• ISSN: 2072-4292

Traditional near-field synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging algorithms reveal target features by exploiting signal amplitude and phase information. However, electromagnetic wave propagation is constrained by short distance. Therefore, the spherical wave approximation needs to be considered. In addition, it is also limited by equipment ambient noise, azimuth-distance coupling, wave scattering, and transmission power. Both the amplitude and phase of the signal suffer from the interference of multiple clutter, so they cannot be effectively utilized. To address these issues, this paper introduces a covering penetration detection system based on an improved Range Migration Algorithm (IMRMA) imaging method. Firstly, the proposed method minimizes interferences from the front end of the system using an optimized window to balance denoising and information preservation. Next, interval non-uniform interpolation, instead of Stolt interpolation decoupling, is employed to reduce the computational overhead significantly. To minimize the effects due to wave scattering and propagation loss, distance information is enhanced using amplitude and phase compensation. This reduces scattering effects and enhances image quality. An experimental system is constructed based on a vector network analyzer (VNA) to image the target. The proposed method takes about half the time of traditional RMA. The PSNR in the chunky bowl experiment is higher than 14 dB, which is higher than all the compared methods in the paper. The test results show that the designed system and the reported method can effectively achieve high-resolution images by strengthening the target intensity and suppressing the environmental artifacts.