IEEE AP-MTT Chapter Presents
"Recent activities on bistatic SAR at Fraunhofer FHR: Forward-looking radar imaging and multi-aspect data acquisition"
Presented by Dr. Ingo Walterscheid
Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques, Wachtberg, Germany
Date: 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Thursday, November 14, 2013
Place: MRC Conference Room, ElectroScience Laboratory, 1330 Kinnear Rd, Columbus, OH
Abstract: The research on bi- and multistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) at the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR at Wachtberg, Germany, started about ten years ago. In 2003, the first bistatic SAR experiments with two aircrafts were performed to analyze the properties of radar imaging with a spatially separated transmitter and receiver and to evaluate the developed focusing algorithms. Later on, further bistatic SAR experiments were conducted with the radar satellite TerraSAR-X and the airborne SAR system PAMIR to demonstrate the feasibility and to investigate the imaging capabilities of spaceborne-airborne bistatic SAR. This talk is about the recent activities on bistatic SAR, which include forward-looking radar imaging and multistatic and multi-aspect SAR data acquisition. A typical application of radar imaging in flight direction is a landing assistance system, which provides the pilot with real-time radar images of the runway independent of weather conditions. The advantages and challenges of such a system and first experimental results are presented. Using multistatic and multi-aspect SAR a lot of information of a region of interest can be collected, because the reflectivity of objects depends on the angle to the transmitter and receiver. Especially in urban areas this technique can help to prevent strong reflections in SAR images or shadowed regions by combining multiple SAR images. Results of radar trials where SAR images of the same area from different aspect angles were taken are analyzed and shown.
Bio: Ingo Walterscheid received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Since 2002, he is with the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR), Wachtberg, Germany. His main research interests are in bi- and multistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system design and signal processing, as well as in bistatic SAR mission design and performance analysis. Since 2010, he has been working on forward looking bistatic SAR and multistatic SAR data acquisition. Dr. Walterscheid is a member of the Information Technology Society of the Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE) and a senior member of the IEEE/GRSS. He and his colleagues were recipients of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Transactions Prize Paper Award for a paper on bistatic SAR processing in 2007, and the ITG award of the German Information Technology Society in recognition of a paper on bistatic SAR measurements with spaceborne and airborne sensors in 2011.
