Velocity Estimation in Multi-Channel SAR Based on Maximum Probability Method

Abstract

A novel scheme is proposed for the velocity estimation of ground moving targets in multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. This scheme exploits the statistics of the interferometric phase. In fact, a moving target consists of multiple point scatterers instead of only one. Therefore, the velocity estimation should be based on the interferometric phase of all the scatterers rather than only one. It is proved that the probability density function of the interferometric phase is a Gaussian function, whose peak corresponds to the radial velocity of the moving target. The peak is estimated via a smoothed histogram of the interferometric phase. Finally, the effectiveness of our proposed scheme is verified by simulated and real airborne SAR data.