Detection of Curving Ground Vehicles in Radar Data for Isar Imaging

nverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of ground moving vehicles using an airborne radar sensor cannot be regarded as a stand-alone problem if operational requirements should be fulfilled. For a system with such an ISAR capability, detection and tracking of moving objects are essential prerequisites for both data acquisition and processing. Consequently, system layout must incorporate components according to a moving target indication (MTI) and tracking system, e.g. multi-channel support and real time STAP (space time adaptive processing) capability. However, alternative solutions are of interest to reduce system cost and allow moving vehicle imaging also for a conventional single channel SAR (synthetic aperture radar) system. This paper proposes a method to identify vehicles which are curving during a conducted data take by analysis of the recorded radar echoes. Identified data intervals could be used for ISAR processing afterwards. Real data of the SAR system PAMIR (phased array multi-channel imaging radar) are used to demonstrate the proposed method.