Phaseless Radar Coincidence Imaging with a MIMO SAR Platform

Abstract

The correlation-based synthetic aperture radar imaging technique, termed radar coincidence imaging, is extended to a fully multistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) configuration. Within this framework, we explore two distinct processing schemes: incoherent processing of intensity data, obtained using asynchronous receivers and inspired by optical ghost imaging works, and coherent processing with synchronized array elements. Improvement in resolution and image quality is demonstrated in both cases using numerical simulations that model an airborne MIMO SAR system at microwave frequencies. Finally, we explore methods for reducing measurement times and computational loads through compressive and gradient image reconstruction using phaseless data.