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Fundamentals of Bistatic SAR

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Bistatic SAR System and Signal Processing Technology

Abstract

Bistatic SAR (BiSAR) has been developing for 40 years, and it is still a topic of much discussion in the field of radar. BiSAR is a SAR system whose transmitter and receiver are spatially separated. This separation improves the system’s capability, reliability and flexibility, making it a promising and useful supplement to a classical monostatic SAR system. BiSAR draws researchers’ attention due to its unique advantages over the traditional monostatic SAR, including frequent monitoring, resolution enhancement, reduced vulnerability for military applications, reduced costs using existing illuminators of opportunity with several receive-only systems, and also the possibility of forward- or backward-looking SAR imaging. Bistatic SAR is receiving more and more attention due to these advantages. This chapter focuses on the fundamentals of the BiSAR system. We first review the history of BiSAR, including the important BiSAR mission ever taken with their interesting results. We then present bistatic SAR imaging geometry and the signal model. We derive and explain the two-dimensional resolution. Finally, we illustrate the bistatic radar equation and bistatic radar cross section (RCS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Space Microwave Remote Sensing System, Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Electronics, Beijing, China

    Robert Wang & Prof. Dr. Yunkai Deng

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  1. Robert Wang
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  2. Prof. Dr. Yunkai Deng
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Correspondence to Robert Wang .

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Wang, R., Deng, Y. (2018). Fundamentals of Bistatic SAR. In: Bistatic SAR System and Signal Processing Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3078-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3078-9_1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-3078-9

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