Collaborative Radar Imaging Algorithms for Maritime Environments

High resolution radar imaging is difficult when considering contested maritime environments. In contested maritime environments, monostatic radar may have limited utility. Geolocation of vessels and formation of high-quality imagery of vessels underway is difficult in bistatic channels. Vessel motion in the slant range direction translates the target signature in the cross-range dimension. Range ambiguities exasperated by bistatic channels can shift the target in the range dimension. Translational and rotational vessel motion causes significant blurring in radar imagery, reducing the ability to perform ATR. The Air Force has a need to develop bistatic radar processing algorithms for maritime images to support ATR and geolocation of vessels. Toyonĺs approach for geolocation and motion compensation of objects in radar imagery is enabled through estimation of 3D vessel structure from multistatic SAR. The estimated 3D scatterer geometry simplifies the motion compensation and geolocation estimation problems.