Direction-of-Arrival Angle and Position Estimation for Extended Targets Using Multichannel Airborne Radar Data

• Published in: IEEE geoscience and remote sensing letters Vol. 19; pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Joshi, Sushil Kumar, Baumgartner, Stefan V., da Silva, Andre Barros Cardoso, Krieger, Gerhard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Airborne radar; Airborne remote sensing; Angle of arrival; Beamforming; Direction; Direction of arrival; direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation; Direction-of-arrival estimation; Estimation; Marine vehicles; maritime safety; Methods; Radar; Radar data; Radar detection; radar detections; SAR (radar); Ships; Spaceborne radar; Synthetic aperture radar; Target detection
• ISSN: 1545-598X; 1558-0571
• DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2022.3155245

Direction-of-arrival (DOA) angle estimation is a prerequisite for projecting the airborne radar-based target detections to ground via a geocoding operation. Most state-of-the-art DOA angle estimation methods assume one detection per target. These methods cannot be applied one-to-one on extended targets like ships because individual ships in high-resolution data are generally composed of several distinct radar detections. In this letter, four methods for estimating the DOA angle for extended targets are formulated and discussed. The performance of the proposed methods is assessed by using simultaneously acquired automatic identification system (AIS) data of real ships. Radar data from the DLR's multichannel airborne digital beamforming synthetic aperture radar (DBFSAR) system are used to demonstrate the robustness and applicability of the proposed methods in real maritime scenarios.