Signal Processing and Exploitation for High-Dimensional Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)

Combat ID performance is driven not only by the need to prevent fratricide and minimize collateral damage but also by the increasingly important requirement to reduce the cost associated with expending high-cost weapons on low-value targets and decoys. During Phase 1 TSC will develop a system concept for integrating a 3D aided target recognition system by exploiting multiple-frequency, full-polarization SAR performed using a circular flight path. The 3D aided target recognition concept will be based on 2D Circular SAR Imaging (CSI) and 3D Tomographic SAR Imaging (TSI) techniques. Three-dimensional projection and true stereo displays of 3D SAR imagery and target CAD-models will be investigated to provide robust semi-automated target ID. The Phase II program will build on Phase I results by optimizing the 3D tomographic imaging software for speed and performance and developing automatic techniques for finding correspondence between the 3D sensed target data and articulated CAD target models. TSC will investigate enhanced visualization techniques and extend the processing to other data sources such as new DCS data collections or UHF-band data collections from other platforms. The processing algorithms can then be integrated into existing WPAFB workstations to provide the ability to perform 3D combat ID.