Antenna Radiation Pattern Design for Moving Targets Velocity Estimation on SAR Imagery

Paulo A. C. Marques José M. B. Dias

ISEL-DEEC IST-IT
R. Conselheiro Emı́dio Navarro 1, Torre Norte, Piso 10, Av. Rovisco Pais,
1949-014 Lisboa Portugal 1049-001 Lisboa Portugal
E-mail: pmarques@isel.pt E-mail: bioucas@lx.it.pt

ABSTRACT
In recent works the authors have shown that it is pos-
sible to retrieve the full velocity vector of a moving target ath
th p
from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data using a single a Flig
enn
Ant
sensor. This paper addresses the design of the radiation an-
tenna pattern leading to the best velocity estimates. Aiming
at this goal, the Fisher information matrix for the unknown
moving targets velocity parameters is computed as function
of the antenna radiation pattern. The optimal antenna radi- nge
ss -Ra
ation pattern is then inferred. Simulation results comparing Cro
the optimal solution with common antenna radiation pat-
terns shows the advantage of the former.

tprint
1. INTRODUCTION Foo
th
Swa
Several methods have recently been proposed to detect, im- e
ang ge
age and estimate moving targets trajectory parameters in re- nt-r Ran
Sla
cent literature [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. These works have
not taken into account the antenna radiation pattern, which
Fig. 1. SAR geometry.
is equivalent to assuming a omnidirectional antenna pattern.
In this case, it has been shown [2] that it not possible to de-
termine the complete target velocity, but only its magnitude. matrix, as function of the antenna radiation pattern, for the
This limitation has been termed the blind angle ambiguity. unknown moving targets velocity parameters is derived in
In previous work [7] we showed that the returned echo Section 3. Section 4 presents simulation results highlighting
from a moving target, in the slow-time frequency domain, is the advantage of the optimal solution over common antenna
a scaled and shifted replica of the antenna radiation pattern, radiation pattern shapes.
immersed in noise. The scale is proportional to the target
cross-range velocity and the shift is proportional the target
range speed. A Bayesian approach was then adopted in [7] 2. SAR SIGNAL MODEL
to derive an optimal estimator of the velocity parameters
using a single SAR sensor. Let us consider the SAR geometry sketched in Fig. 1. The
In this work we determine the Fisher information ma- radar platform travels at speed vr in the navigation direction
trix for the unknown moving targets trajectory parameters as and has an antenna radiation pattern a. Consider a single
function of the antenna radiation pattern. The goal is to infer moving target with constant complex reflectivity fm , coor-
the antenna radiation pattern shape leading to the best target ( )
dinates xm ; ym when the platform is at position y , =0
parameters estimates; i.e., we want to find the antenna radi- (
and speed vector vx ; vy )=( )
m vr ; bm vr defined in the
ation pattern that minimizes the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound ( ) ( )
slant-plane x; y ; vector m ; bm denotes the target rela-
(CRLB) of each velocity parameter. tive velocity with respect to the radar. The ground nth static
This paper is organized as follows. The next section target has complex reflectivity fn and coordinates xn ; yn . ( )
establishes the signal model and notation. The information When the radar is positioned at the coordinate y u, the =
 This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnolo- corresponding received signal in the slow-time frequency
gia, under the project POSI/34071/CPS/2000 domain ku and the fast-time frequency domain ! , after quadra-
ture demodulation, is (see [7] for details) The goal is to infer the antenna radiation pattern shape lead-
q ing to the best target parameters estimates; i.e., we want to
( )= ( ) ( ) k 2 ( )
S ku ; ! P ! A ku ;  fm e,j 4k2 ,pmu Xm e,j mu Ym find the antenna radiation pattern that minimizes the Cramer-
k
X
P ! A ku ; 0 fne,j 4k2 ,ku2 xn e,jku yn ; (1) The elements of the Fisher information matrix for a cir-
+ () ( ) Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) of each velocity parameter.
n cular complex Gaussian process are given by [10]
()
where P ! is the emitted pulse, k =2
=,  m ; m ,=( )  
( ) [1 (2 )(
A ku ;  / a = m ku , kp 2 )]
m , and (as defined in I  ij tr [ ( )]
C s =
i s () () () ()
,1  Cs  C ,1  Cs 
j
[1], [2]) m = 1+
p 2 b m ,  m p  +
2m m2 , m Ym =  H 
~ ( ) ( ) ~( )
+
m xm m ym , Xm Ym2 + = x2m ym2 . + Re   Cs,1   ;
+ 2
The first term on the right hand side of equation (1) is i j
due to the moving target, and the remaining terms are due to i; j ; . =1 2 (4)
the static ground. The reflectivity of all targets is assumed The first term in equation (4) is null because the noise
to be independent of the aspect angle. Vector 0  ; is (0 1)
covariance matrix is independent of the moving target pa-
the velocity vector of a static target. After pulse compres- rameters. Recalling that   ~( ) = A( )
fm  , then
sion and phase compensation for the term due to the moving
target (assuming m , Xm , and Ym known), in the fast-time
H ~ ( )=
  f  ,k A  ; A  ;


; A  (5) [_ ( ) _ ( ) _ ( )]
m m m 0 1 N ,1
spatial domain, the received echo is

Sc (ku ; X ) = Rp (X , Xm )A(ku ; )fm + A(ku ; 0 )  ~H () = f  2km , ku [A_ (); A_ ();


; A_ ()];
m m 2 2 0 1 N ,1
X ku2 Xm m
fn Rp (X , Xn )e,j 4k (Xn + 2m ) e,jku (Yn , mm ) ,
Y
(2) (6)
n _( )
h ( )
where A   @A ku ;  =@ku .
where the Fresnel approximation, i.e. 4k2 , (ku =m) 2 i1=2  The Fisher matrix elements can be written as
2 X N jA_ ( )j2
2k, 41k (ku=m)2 , and the narrow band approximation were I11 () = c k2 i
m i=,N jA( 0 )i j2
(7)
( )
taken; function Rp X is the auto-correlation of the emitted
pulse.
XN jA_ ( )j2  2k , k 2
S [ ]
Let us define  S,N


S0


SN T , where Si  I22 () = c i m ui
( ) =
=
Sc kui ; Xm , kui 2Ni K , for i ,N; :::; ; :::; N , 0 i=,N j A (  0 ) i j 2 2 m2 (8)

where K is the spatial sampling frequency that is assumed
to be larger than the synthetic aperture bandwidth (spatial
sampling interval smaller then half of the antenna azimuthal
width), Define also  A( ) = [ () ()
A,N 


A0 


AN 
where Ai  ( )= ( )
A kui ;  .
Let us assume that the parameter  is known. In this
case only the noise term in the expression (2) is random. As-
suming that the number of static scatterers is large, none is
predominant, and that they are uniformly distributed within
a wavelength, then the complex noise term is circularly sym-
S ited, it goes to zero as jku j increases; therefore the
metric and Gaussian [8] Therefore density of vector con-
ditioned to  and fm is
p(Sjfm ; ) = N (es ; Cs ); (3)
eS = E [S] and Cs = E [(S , es )(S , es )H ].
where 
In work [9] we show that E [S] = fm A( ) and Cs =
PLEp 2

X
Y diag(j[A( 0 )]i j ), for i = ,N; :::; N , where P is the
mean power of the static ground per resolution unit, L is
the cross-range length, Ep is the energy of the transmitted



pulse in range, X and Y are the resolution lengths in
range and cross-range, respectively.
3. ANTENNA RADIATION PATTERN DESIGN
In this section we compute the Fisher information matrix
elements as function of the antenna radiation pattern shape.
XN jA_ ( )j2  2k , k 
I12 () = c  , k m ui ;(9)
m i=,N jA( 0 )i j 2 2m
2
( )] where c = 2jfm j2
X
Y=(PL). We assume that A(ku ; 0 ) 6=
0 for ku 2 [,
K=2;
K=2].
The element I11 refers to the slant-range speed, whereas
I22 refers to the cross-range velocity. A brief analysis of this
two elements lead us to do the following conclusions:
 ( )
Since, in practical applications, A ku ; 0 is bandlim-
_( ) ( )
term jAi  =Ai 0 j tends to exibit its lower values
( )
when the displacement between A ku ; 0 and A ku ;  ( )
is small.
 The element I22 is affected by a quadratic factor cen-
tered on km . This factor enhances the first derivative
by a factor proportional to its distance from the cen-
_( )
tral frequency; therefore, the higher jAi  j at limit
of its bandwidth the higher I22 .
Based on this results one can anticipate: The slant-range
velocity estimation will be more accurate than the cross-
range velocity estimation; A Gaussian shaped radiation pat-
tern will provide worse CRLB than triangular shaped pat-
terns. A trapezoidal shape should exhibit better results than
the other two, since it has higher derivative values at it’s
extremes.
 Table 1. Simulation parameters.
Parameter Value
Carrier frequency 5GHz
Altitude 10Km
Velocity 300Km/h
Look angle 0
20
SNR 0dB

Fig. 3. CRLB (square root) of azimuthal speed parameter

versus illumination shape.

Fig. 2. CRLB (square root) of range speed parameter versus

ground-return superposition.

4. ANTENNA RADIATION PATTERN SHAPE

EVALUATION

We now compute the CRLB of the azimuthal and range

speeds for Gaussian, triangular and trapezoidal shaped an-
tenna radiation patterns. Table 1 shows the parameters used.

Figures 2 and 3 plot the square root of CRLB for the

range speed and azimuthal speed for the considered shapes
versus the superposition jKa , km j=Ka , where Ka is the
3 ()
, dB antenna bandwidth. The label trapezoid x refers
1
to a trapezoid with top length , x of the base length.
As expected, the trapezoidal shape performs better fol-
lowed by the triangular and by the Gaussian shapes. No- Fig. 4. Standard deviation of range speed parameter estima-
tice that the Gaussian shape is near one order of magnitude tion versus ground-return superposition.
worse than the remaining antenna radiation patterns.
Figures 4 and 5 plot sample variances of the target ve-
locity estimator developed in [7]. These experimental re-
sults are in agreement with those plotted in Fig.s 2 and 3,
confirming the advantages of using antenna radiation pat-
terns exhibiting high derivatives at their band extremes.

Fig. 5. Standard deviation of azimuthal speed parameter
estimation versus ground-return superposition.
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The Fisher information matrix for moving targets veloc-
ity parameters in synthetic aperture radar applications was
computed. Based on the structure of the Fisher information
matrix elements, we concluded that the cross-range speed
estimation will always exhibit higher variance than the slant-
range speed estimation. Higher derivatives of the antenna
radiation pattern at its band extremes lead to better velocity
estimation results. Basically, rectangular shapes are much
better than Gaussian shapes. This conclusion was confirmed
with simulation results.
[10] S. Kay, Fundamentals of Statistical Signal Processing.
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[1] Mehrdad Soumekh, Synthetic Aperture Radar Sig-
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