Velocity Estimation of Moving Targets in Multi-Channel SAR via an Amplitude-Based Weighted Average of Multiple Pixels

Abstract

A novel scheme is proposed for the velocity estimation of ground moving targets in multi-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. This scheme utilizes the velocity estimates of all the detected points to obtain the precise velocity of the moving target. In fact, a moving target consists of multiple point scatterers instead of only one. Therefore, the velocity estimation should be based on the information of all the point scatterers on the moving target rather than only one. In this paper, the information is the velocity estimates of each detected point on the moving target. It is proved that the actual velocity is a weighted average of velocity estimates of all the detected points and the weight of each point is simple to be calculated with acceptable computing cost. The effectiveness is verified by test results from simulated data and real airborne SAR data.