Low-Cost High-Resolution Synthetic Aperture Imaging for a mm-Wave Tank-Mounted Radar

A purely signal processing approach is proposed for generating high resolution synthetic aperture images from the millimeter wave tank-mounted MTi radar being developed by the Army. Such images provide an all-weather, day/night target classification and fire control capability to the tank commander. The greatly enhanced functionality of the system is obtained throught the addition of a low-cost, compact digital processor with an interface to the radar screen. The signal processor taps the IQ digital data generated by the radar and produces synthetic aperature images of ground based on tank or target motion. High quality synthetic aperature imaging is possible in the presence of severe motion irregularities of the tank and/or the target because of reliable, high accuracy, computationally efficient autofocus and scale estimation techniques developed by GORCA. No position or velocity measuring equipment are needed. Such information is derived exclusively from the raw IQ data of the radar. As a result, the proposed subsystem will be low-cost, compact and lightweight. Phase I will use requirements definition, system specification, and trade-off studies to show the feasibility of obtaining significant improvement in target classification and fire control performance through the use of the proposed imaging techniques.