Innovative Techniques for Interrupted Synthetic Aperture Radar

In the proposed program, we will first perform a detailed investigation of the effects of various temporal and spectral interruptions on SAR image quality and utility. We will then develop innovative interrupted SAR imaging algorithms using the state-of-the-art sparse signal recovery (SSR) techniques, and consider their fast implementation by fully exploiting the SAR data structure. We propose to investigate the algorithms using both synthesized and collected data, and to evaluate their technical feasibility for practical applications in terms of effectiveness, robustness, computational complexity, memory requirement, and implementation simplicities. BENEFIT: The novel approaches we propose to develop have many advantages over existing methods. A successful effort of this program will significantly enhance the Air Force's ability to detect and classify targets and perform surveillance in the presence of an overcrowded spectrum and/or hostile ratio frequency interference. A partial list of these applications includes Counter-Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C-ISR), persistent surveillance missions of UAV, domestic counter-terrorism efforts, boarder security, drug trafficking, ground mapping.