MIMO SAR Imaging: Potential and Challenges

Wen-Qin Wang University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

INTRODUCTION
Although synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a mature topic and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar is well researched [1], [2], there appears to be little work done in applying MIMO concepts to SAR imaging [3][5]. Note that the MIMO SAR discussed in this paper is different from general MIMO radars because aperture synthesis is employed in the MIMO SAR. Given that MIMO SAR is in its infancy, there is no clear denition of what it is. It is generally assumed that independent signals are transmitted through different antennas, and these signals, after propagating through the environment, are received by multiple antennas and processed by synthetic aperture radar technique [6]. Generally MIMO SAR has two advantages. The rst advantage lies in spatial diversity gain and exible transmit/receive antenna arrangement. The second advantage is resolution improvement. This explains why MIMO SAR and associated exploitation methodology can address the shortcomings of current SAR in several specic remote sensing applications. Certainly, MIMO SAR also has some disadvantages [7]. This paper investigates MIMO SAR potential and challenges in high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) remote-sensing, ground-moving target indication (GMTI), and threedimensional (3D) imaging, with an aim to call for more publications and researches on these topics. The remaining sections are organized as follows. The section MIMO SAR Antenna Arrangements discusses the MIMO SAR antenna arrangements. MIMO SAR Waveform Diversity investigates the MIMO SAR waveform diversity. Next, the potential and challenges in HRWS remote sensing, GMTI, and 3D imaging applications are analyzed in MIMO SAR Potentials and Challenges. Finally, the Conclusion concludes the paper.

Consider an MIMO SAR system with M colocated transmit antennas and N colocated receive antennas, as shown in Figure 1. We can get a total of M N independent returns. MIMO SAR thus offers more degrees of freedom. Since different antenna arrangements have different spatial sampling characteristics and signal processing complexity, MIMO SAR antennas should be optimally arranged for the specied applications. For linear array congurations, we get the following conclusions [10]: 1. The transmitter is the same to the receiver, M = N = L1: The utmost number of effective virtual phase centers for a uniform array is 2L1 - 1. In contrast, the utmost effective virtual phase centers of a uniform linear array is . 2. The transmitter and the receiver have no overlapped elements, M + N = L2: The utmost number of effective virtual phase centers is .

3. The transmitter and the receiver have overlapped elements: Suppose the transmitter and receiver have N over overlapped elements; the utmost number of effective virtual phase centers is . (1) It can be concluded from the above three cases that the minimum redundant array is achieved when the transmit and/or receive arrays are congured in nonuniform linear mode. However, in these cases the nonuniform spatial sampling problem will signicantly increase the subsequent signal-processing complexity [11]. The multiple antennas can be arranged either in elevation dimension (cross track), azimuth dimension (along track), or in both dimensions, as shown in Figure 2. Good operation exibility and recongurability can be obtained by utilizing the equivalent phase centers [10], but optimizing the array conguration requires further investigations.

MIMO SAR ANTENNA ARRANGEMENTS

When orthogonal signals are transmitted from different antennas, their returns will carry independent information [9]. Authors current address: W.-Q. Wang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, School of Communication and Information Engineering, No. 2006, XiYuan DaDao, Hi-Tech District, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731 China, E-mail address: wqwang@uestc.edu.cn. Manuscript SYSAES2011-0059rr was received July 30, 2011, revised January 24, 2012 and June 21, 2012, and ready for publication January 12, 2013. Review was handled by M. Greco. 0885/8985/13/ $26.00 2013 IEEE 18

MIMO SAR WAVEFORM DIVERSITY

In a MIMO SAR, each antenna should transmit a unique waveform, orthogonal to the waveforms transmitted by other antennas. This is similar to the waveform diversity discussed in MIMO radars [12]. However, the waveforms applied in general MIMO radars may be not suitable for AUGUST 2013

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Figure 1.

Illustration of MIMO SAR virtual antenna array.

SAR should use LFM-based waveforms. An adaptive LFM the MIMO SAR. The waveforms used in SAR should have waveform was proposed in [13], but only the simple up- and a wide bandwidth so that a high range resolution can be obdown-chirp waveforms are used and only two simultaneous tained. Another property is that because the SAR is usually transmissions are allowed. placed inside airplanes or satellites, a high average transmit We concluded that [14], if the chirp signals with equal power is thus required for the transmitted waveforms. For chirp rate and these two reasons, MIMO SAR waveforms should have a ) denotes the starting frelarge time-bandwidth product and a constant modulus so quency, Br is the chirp bandwidth) are used, their returns as to achieve a high-range resolution and reduce the required peak transmit power. Certainly, the waveforms also should have good ambiguity characteristics such as range resolution, Doppler resolution, adjacent-band interferences, and matched ltering sidelobe performance. For these reasons, most of current MIMO radar waveforms are not suitable for MIMO SAR and difcult to implement in the real world [7]. As linearly frequency modulation (LFM, i.e., chirp) waveforms have been widely used in modern radars due to their advantages such as high resolution, constant modulus, Doppler tolerance, and implementation simplicity, from a practical point Figure 2. of view we think the MIMO Different arrangements of the multiple antennas in a MIMO SAR. AUGUST 2013 IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 19

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Figure 3.

Two example OFDM chirp diverse pulses.

can be separated during subsequent signal processing. The chirp signals with equal chirp rate and offers an additional suppression of the cross-correlation components; however, this means a wider total transmit/receive bandwidth for the radio frequency (RF) hardware. As a compromise, we can use the chirp signals with adjacent starting frequency and inverse chirp rate or nonoverlapped frequency coverage. We extended conventional orthogonal frequency diversion multiplexing (OFDM) signal [15] into the OFDM chirp waveform, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 4 shows the corresponding time-domain amplitude and frequency-domain spectra. It has a good peak-average performance which is an advantage for the RF hardware transmitter and a large time-bandwidth product. A shortcoming is that the spectra is not uniform across the bandwidth like conventional chirp waveforms.

MIMO SAR POTENTIAL AND CHALLENGES MIMO SAR HRWS IMAGING

Efcient remote sensing techniques should provide highresolution imagery over a wide area of surveillance, but it is a contradiction due to the minimum antenna area constraint. The illuminated area must be restricted so as to avoid ambiguous returns. In this respect, a high operating pulse repetition frequency (PRF) is desired to suppress azimuth ambiguity. But the PRF is limited by the range ambiguity requirement. One representative solution is the displaced phase center antenna (DPCA) [16]. The basic idea is to divide the receive antenna into multiple apertures in the along-track direction; however, the relation between 20

Figure 4.

Amplitude and spectra of the OFDM chirp diverse pulse.

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Figure 5.

Illustration of MIMO SAR with multiple elevation antennas.

platform speed and along-track subantenna offset have to be real-timely adjusted to obtain a uniform spatial sampling signal. Another representative solution is the ScanSAR [17]. It achieves a wider swath at an expense of degraded azimuth resolution. Several other innovative concepts also have been proposed for HRWS imaging [18], but they employ a single transmit antenna. MIMO SAR provides a potential to HRWS imaging. Figure 5 gives an illustration of MIMO SAR for HRWS imaging. The basic idea is to form multiple transmit and receive apertures which are steered to different sub-swaths [19]. These subapertures can be disjointed or overlapped in space. Multiple pairs of virtual transmit and receive beams can be formed simultaneously in the direction of a desired sub-swath. Equivalently a large swath can be synthesized. However, there is a technical challenge lies in developing high-precision image formation algorithms and resolving the uncontinuous sub-swath problem. The multiple uncontinuous sub-swaths should be synthesized to a continuous wide swath.

SAR there are no additional degrees of freedom that can be used to estimate the moving targets position information. MIMO SAR provides exible system congurations. Figure 6 shows the geometry of an MIMO SAR GMTI system, where the SAR platform is moving along the x axis at a constant speed. Note that the MIMO SAR is different from conventional SAR with three antennas in azimuth, because different orthogonal waveforms are used in the MIMO SAR whereas the same waveform is used in conventional SAR. As the multiple antennas are displaced in the azimuth direction, we can perform clutter suppression like the DPCA GMTI technique [21]. Next, GMTI can be obtained by the interferometry processing algorithm [22]. Figure 7 gives an illustration of the MIMO SAR GMTI processing steps.

MIMO SAR GMTI

GMTI is a twofold problem: one is the detection of moving targets in severe ground clutter, and the other is the estimation of their moving parameters. The moving target with a slant-range velocity will generate a Doppler frequency shift, which could be detected by the along-track interferometry (ATI) SAR. However, if there is more than negligible clutter contribution, the target radial velocity may lead to erroneously estimated. The ATI SAR is thus a clutter limited GMTI detector [20]. Another representative GMTI technique is the DPCA. However, stationary targets in the imaging scene may contribute phase noise and consequently complicate the process of extracting moving targets. That is, DPCA SAR is a noise-limited GMTI detector [20]. Moreover, in a two-antenna DPCA AUGUST 2013

Figure 6.

Illustration of MIMO SAR GMTI with multiple azimuth antennas.

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MIMO SAR Imaging

formation loss of the explored area. 3D SAR provides a potential solution to this problem. Current 3D SAR imaging techniques include interferometry SAR (InSAR), curved SAR (CSAR), and linear array SAR (LASAR) [23]. InSAR can create interferometric imagery to measure the scene height, but it has no height resolution. CSAR achieves 3D imaging by utilizing curve platform trajectory, but it is difcult to ensure a precise curve trajectory. LASAR can provide high-resolution 3D imagery by combining the real and SAR imaging technology. Two downward-looking LASAR systems, DRIVE and ARTINO, are being developed at ONERA and FGAN-FHR, respectively [24]. However, the antenna arrays used in these two systems are SIMO (single-input and multiple-output) arrangements. It is necessary to extend them into MIMO arrangements. Figure 8 shows two possible MIMO SAR antenna arrangements for 3D imaging. These arrangements can also potentially be used for simultaneous 3D SAR imaging and GMTI applications. Moreover, multidimensional spatial lter can be used to tackle possible range and/or Doppler ambigu-

Figure 7.

Illustration of the MIMO SAR GMTI processing steps.

MIMO SAR 3D IMAGING

The last but not the lease of MIMO SAR potentials is 3D imaging. Conventional SAR obtains its two-dimensional (2D) imagery by projecting a 3D distributed targets onto the 2D plane. Consequently it usually suffers from geometric distortions, e.g., foreshortening and layover. Strong shadowing effects caused by buildings, hills, and valleys may result in in-

Figure 8.

Two typical MIMO SAR antenna arrangements for 3D imaging.

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ities; at the same time, the increased degrees of freedom in MIMO SAR can be employed to overcome the contradiction between high resolution, wide swath, and high signal-tonoise (SNR) performances. Certainly, much further work should be investigated on optimal array design and highprecision 3D image formation algorithms.
[8] Abramovich, Y. I., and Frazer, G. J. Bounds on the volume and height distributions for the MIMO radar ambiguity function. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Vol. 15 (May 2008), 505508. [9] Chen, C. Y., and Vaidyanathan, P. Minimum redundancy MIMO radars. In Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Seattle, WA, 2008, 4548. [10] Wang, W. Q. Virtual antenna array analysis for MIMO synthetic aperture radars. International Journal of Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 2012 (January 2012), 110. [11] Krieger, G., Gebert, N., and Moreira, A. Unambiguous SAR signal reconstruction from nonuniform displaced center sampling. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Vol. 1 (October 2004), 260264. [12] Chen, C. Y., and Vaidyanathan, P. P. MIMO radar waveform optimization with prior information of the extended targets and clutter. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Vol. 57 (September 2009), 35333544. [13] Picciolo, M. S., Griesbach, J. D., and Gerlach, K., Adaptive LFM waveform diversity. In Proceedings of IEEE Radar Conference, Rome, Italy, May 2008, 16. [14] Wang, W. Q., Peng, Q. C., and Cai, J. Y. Waveform-diversitybased millimeter-wave SAR remote sensing. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 47 (March 2009), 691700. [15] Levanon, N., and Mozeson, E. Radar Signals. New York, NY: Wiley-IEEE Press, 2004. [16] Currie, A., and Brown, M. A. Wide-swath SAR. IEE Proceedingson Radar, Sonar and Navigation, Vol. 139 (April 1992), 122135. [17] Moore, R. K., Claassen, J. P., and Lin, Y. H. Scanning spaceborne synthetic aperture radar with integrated radiometer. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Vol. 17 (May 1981), 410420. [18] Suess, M., Gradfmueller, B., and Zahn, R. A novel high resolution, wide swath SAR system. In Proceedings of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Sydney, Australia, September 2001, 10131015. [19] Wang, W. Q. Near-space vehicles: supply a gap between satellites and airplanes for remote sensing. IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, Vol. 26 (April 2011), 49. [20] Chiu S., and Livingstone, C. A comparison of displaced phase centre antenna and along-track interferometry technique for RADARSAT-2 ground moving target indicetion, Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 34 (February 2005), 2751. [21] Jung, J. H., Jung, J. S., Jung, C. H., and Kwag, Y. K. Ground moving target displacement compensation in the DPCA based SAR-GMTI system. In Proceedings of IEEE Radar Conference, May 2009, 14. [22] Wang, W. Q. MIMO SAR GMTI with three-antenna in azimuth. In Proceedings of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Vancouver, Canada, July 2011, 16621665. [23] Mahafza B. R., and Sajjadi, M. Three-dimensional SAR imaging using linear array in transverse motion. IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Vol. 22 (January 1996), 499510. [24] Nouvel, J. F., Plessis, O. du., Svedin, J., and Gustafsson, A. ONERA DRIVE project. In Proceedings of European Synthetic Aperture Radar Conference, Friedrichshafen, Germany, June 2008.

CONCLUSION
This paper investigated MIMO SAR for several specic remote sensing applications from a top-level system description, with an aim to call for more publications and research on these topics. Due to the signicantly increased degrees of freedom, MIMO SAR provides better system design exibility and improved system performance. The potentials and challenges of MIMO SAR in HRWS remote sensing, GMTI, and 3D imaging are analyzed. It is shown that MIMO SAR indeed provides promising potentials for future remote sensing but much further research work about waveform diversity design and signal processing algorithm should be carried out.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No. 41101317, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under grant ZYGX2010J001, the First Grade of 49th Chinese Post-Doctor Research Funds under grant 20110490143, and the Open Funds of the State Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences under grant OFSLRSS201011.

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