IMAGING ANALYSIS OF FREQUENCY MODULATION CONTINUOUS WAVE SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR IN NEAR RANGE MODE1

Frequency-Modulation Continuous-Wave Synthetic Aperture Radar(FMCW SAR)has shown great potential in the applications of civil and military fields because of its easy deployment and low cost.However,most of these work and analysis are concentrated on airborne FMCW SAR,where the characteristics of the imaging geometry and signal are much similar to that of traditional pulsed-SAR.As a result,a series of test campaigns of automobile-based FMCW SAR were sponsored by Institute of Electronics,Chinese Academy of Sciences(IECAS)in the autumn of 2012.In this paper,we analyze the imaging issues of FMCW SAR in automobile mode(named as near range mode),where a vehicle is used as moving platform and a large looking angle is configured.The imaging geometry and signal properties are analyzed in detail.We emphasize the difference of the near range mode from the traditional airborne SAR mode.Based on the analysis,a focusing approach is proposed in the paper to handle the data focusing in the case.Simulation experiment and real data of automobile FMCW SAR are used to validate the analysis.