Statistical Analysis of the Effects of Virtual Element Position Errors on Airborne Down-Looking LASAR 3-D Imaging

• Published in: IEEE geoscience and remote sensing letters Vol. 12; no. 9; pp. 1888 - 1892
• Main Authors: Kuoye, Han, Qian, Bao, Weixian, Tan, Yanping, Wang, Wen, Hong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.09.2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 3-D imaging; Antenna arrays; Apertures; Array signal processing; Arrays; Calibration; Degradation; Errors; Imaging; Linear-array synthetic aperture radar (LASAR); phase error; Radar imaging; Synthetic aperture radar; Three dimensional; virtual element; Linear-array synthetic aperture radar (LASAR); 3-D imaging; virtual element; phase error
• ISSN: 1545-598X; 1558-0571
• DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2015.2436412

In order to achieve 3-D imaging with an airborne down-looking linear-array synthetic aperture radar (LASAR), a uniform virtual antenna array may be obtained by aperture synthesis of the cross-track sparse multiple-input-multiple-output array. However, the actual 3-D imaging quality is unavoidably degraded by errors in the virtual element position. In this letter, we investigate the effects of these errors on the forms and the degrees of image quality degradation by decomposing the error-related stochastic processes via an orthogonal transform based on discrete Legendre polynomials. It should be noted that these analyses are helpful for designing a LASAR system and providing a reference for specifying the requisite precision of measurement devices and calibration methods. Finally, we briefly consider the use of calibration methods to eliminate the effects of errors.