Comparisons of MIMO SAR Antenna Arrangements

in Wide-Swath Remote Sensing

Huaizong Shao, Wen-Qin Wang, Member IEEE, Hui Chen

School of Communication and Information Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Email: hzshao@uestc.edu.cn; wqwang@uestc.edu.cn; huichen0929@uestc.edu.cn

receiver
AbstractThis paper compares four elevation multiple-input transmitter/receiver transmitter
cro ss-track cro ss-track
multiple-output (MIMO) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) antenna
arrangements for wide-swath remote sensing. The signal models
and range ambiguity function to signal ratio performance are
comparatively compared, along with numerical results. It is
shown that, when compared with conventional single-antenna
SAR and existing multichannel SAR techniques, MIMO SAR
indeed provides a potential solution for wide-swath remote (a) N TN R M IM O SAR (b) N TW R M IM O SAR
sensing.
receiver transmitter/receiver
transmitter
KeywordsSynthetic aperture radar (SAR), multiple-input cro ss-track cro ss-track
multiple-output (MIMO), wide-swath remote sensing, MIMO SAR,
multichannel SAR.

I. Introduction
Range ambiguity is a key problem associated with high
pulse repetition frequency (PRF) SAR system, particularly
for high-PRF SAR wide-swath remote sensing applications
[1], [2]. The concept of elevation multichannel radar [3]
consists of an array antenna split in elevation dimension. The
overall antenna dimension is smaller than that implied by the
minimum antenna area constraint. This yields a broad beam
in elevation covering a wide swath but at the same time
gives rise to range ambiguous echoes. Moreover, multichannel
SAR and beamforming techniques may results in uncontinuous
swathes and blind ranges. It is thus necessary to extend them
to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) operation.
Although basic MIMO radar has received much attention
in recent years [4][7], there are relative little literatures on the
MIMO SAR employing aperture synthesis [8][16]. Compared
to conventional single-input single-output (SISO) SAR, good
operation exibility and recongurability can be obtained for
MIMO SAR by specically arranging the multiple antennas.
This provides a potential solution to resolve the constraints in
conventional single-antenna SAR systems. For a MIMO SAR
equipped with M transmit antennas and N receive antennas,
there will be at a most of M N independent returns [17],
[18]. MIMO SAR gives more coecient and therefore provides
more degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) which can be used to resolve
possible ambiguous signals. Thus, MIMO SAR is a promising
HRWS remote sensing technique.
In [19], [20], we have investigated the roles of MIMO
SAR waveform diversity and beamforming in HRWS remote
sensing applications. In this paper, we compare four colocated
MIMO SAR antenna arrangements for wide-swath remote
sensing. Their performances are comparatively studied. The
remaining sections are organized as follows. Section II intro-
duces the colocated MIMO SAR antenna arrangement. Section
(c) W TN R M IM O SAR (d) W TW R M IM O SAR
Fig. 1: Four elevation MIMO SAR antenna arrangements.
III presents the echo signal model in wide-swath imaging.
Section IV compares the four MIMO SAR range ambiguity
to signal ratio (RASR). Finally, numerical results are provided
in Section V and conclusions are drawn in Section VI.
II. Antenna Arrangement
The multiple antennas in a MIMO SAR can be either
arranged in ight direction (along-track), perpendicular to it
(cross-track), or both dimensions [20]. Since azimuth MIMO
SAR is similar to the classic DPCA technique [21], this paper
considers only elevation MIMO SAR. In this case, there still
are four dierent antenna congurations, as shown in Figure 1.
We refer them as narrow-beam transmission narrow-beam re-
ception (NTNR), narrow-beam wide-beam reception (NTWR),
wide-beam transmission narrwo-beam reception (WTNR) and
wide-beam transmission wide-beam reception (WTWR), re-
spectively. They have dierent spatial sampling characteristics
and signal processing complexities due to their dierent an-
tenna beampatterns. Note that they are dierent from the con-
ventional single-phase center multibeam (SPCM) and multiple-
phase center multibeam (MPCM) known in the classic DPCA
technique [21]. In DPCA technique the multiple antennas are
placed in the along-track dimension, whereas in this paper the
multiple antennas are placed only in the cross-track dimension.
The NTNR MIMO SAR shown in Figure 1(a) transmits
orthogonal signals by multiple narrow-beams directing toward
dierent subswathes and receives the corresponding returns

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c IEEE 196
by multiple narrow continuous beams that span the whole B. NTWR MIMO SAR
transmitting beams. A distinct channel is associated with
each receiving beam, and hence, the returns can be separated In synchronous transmission, the received signal at the nth
by utilizing the waveform orthogonality. The NTWR MIMO receiving antenna is
SAR shown in Figure 1(b) also employs multiple narrow 
3
  
transmitting beams that contiguously span the desired swath; xn (t) = m,n sm (t n,m ) exp j2 fc t n,m , n = 1, 2, 3
but the receiver is quite dierent from the NTNR operation m=1
mode. In this case, the MIMO SAR employs multiple wide- (4)
beams that are displaced in the cross-track direction.
whereas in asynchronous transmission the received signals at
The WTNR MIMO SAR shown in Figure 1(c) uses wide- the nth receiving antenna is
beams in the transmitter but multiple narrow-beams directing  
t n,1 + T
toward dierent subswathes in the receiver. Figure 1(d) shows xn (t) =rect n,1 s1 (t n,1 )
T
the WTWR MIMO SAR, in which wide-beams illustrating  p 
the whole swath are used in both transmitter and receiver. t n,2
+ rect n,2 s2 (t n,2 ) (5)
Similarly, distinct channels are also used in the receivers Tp
and their returns can be separated by utilizing the waveform  
t n,3 T
orthogonality. The four MIMO SAR antenna arrangements + rect n,3 s3 (t n,3 )
have dierent DOFs, equivalent phase centers and imaging Tp
performance. For simplicity and without loss of generality, Therefore, in this case nine independent channels can be
three transmit antennas and three receive antennas are assumed obtained by the matched ltering.
in following discussions.
C. WTNR MIMO SAR
III. Echo Signal Models In this case, each target is illustrated by all the three trans-
Suppose the three antennas in each MIMO SAR use the mitting antennas but illustrated by only one receiving antenna.
waveforms s1 (t), s2 (t) and s3 (t), respectively. As the four To achieve wide-swath remote sensing, the WTNR MIMO
MIMO SARs have dierent operation modes and thus dierent SAR should use synchronous transmission. The received signal
echo signal characteristics, in the following we comparatively at the nth receiving antenna is
derive the echo signal models under the assumption of an equal 
3
swath width.   
xn (t) = m,n sm (t n,m ) exp j2 fc t n,m + xcrn (t). (6)
m=1

A. NTNR MIMO SAR Each receiving antenna yields three independent signals
through the separately matched ltering, but each target is
For this operation mode, both synchronous and asyn- illustrated by only one receiving antenna.
chronous transmission are feasible for the three antennas:
When synchronous transmission is employed, the transmit- D. WTWR MIMO SAR
ted signals can be expressed as
Dierent from the WTNR MIMO SAR, in the WTWR

3 MIMO SAR each target is also illustrated by all the receiving
s(t) = sm (t) exp ( j2 fc t) (1) antennas, besides all the transmitting antennas. The received
m=1 signal at the nth receiving antenna is
where fc is the carrier frequency. The received signal at the 
3
  
nth receiving antenna is the weighted and delayed summation xn (t) = m,n sm (t n,m ) exp j2 fc t n,m . (7)
of all the transmitted signals m=1

   Each receiving antenna yields three independent returns

xn (t) = m,n sm (t n,m ) exp j2 fc t n,m + xcrn (t) (2)
where n,m is the channel coecient with the mth antenna as
input and nth antenna as output, n,m is the corresponding time
delay and xcrn (t) is the coupling returns from other waveforms
and entering into the nth receiver sidelobes.
When the transmitted waveforms are designed to be or-
thogonal, in the NTNR MIMO SAR, each receiving antenna
utilizes only one transmitted waveform through the matched
ltering
xn (t) = xn (t) sm (t), n = 1, 2, 3 and m = n (3)
where denotes the conjugate operator and is the convolution
operator.
through separately matched ltering.
IV. Range Ambiguity to Signal Ratio (RASR)
Given a PRF or range of PRFs, the antenna dimensions
and/or weighting (to lower the sidelobe energy) must be such
that the signal-to-ambiguity noise specication is met. MIMO
SAR has an azimuth ambiguity similar to conventional SISO
SAR, but the range ambiguity is slightly complex compared
with that of SISO SAR because the total range ambiguity
consists of not only common range ambiguity in SISO SAR
but also extra range ambiguity, which is the mutual interference
between echoes from adjacent channels. In the following, we
utilize a generic point target model to examine the RASR
including cross-correlation interferences.

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR) 197

 In a stripmap side-looking SAR imaging, the antenna gain TABLE I: Simulation system parameters
along with swath will be fast-time varying (range-dependent)
rather than a constant. Consider the SAR range ambiguity Parameters Values Units
geometry, for a uniformly illuminated aperture and assuming carrier frequency 10 GHz
the slant range center is r, the time-varying far-eld pattern is platform velocity 7500 m/s
platform altitude 860 km
given by [20] Earth radius 6370 km
  minimum slant range 1100 km
Dr sin (, r) maximum slant range 1550 km
Gr (, r)  sinc2 , || T p (8) chirp duration time 10 s
chirp bandwidth 100 MHz
pulse repeated frequency 1000 Hz
where Dr is the elevation antenna dimension in meter and range sampling frequency 200 MHz
(, r) is number of transmit antennas 3
number of receive antennas 3
 2
1 (r + c0 ) + (Re + h s ) Re
2 2
(, r) = cos
2(r + c0 )(Re + h s )
 2  (9) respectively. Specially, for ideal waveform orthogonality, (42)
r + (Re + h s )2 R2e
cos1 simplies to
2r(Re + h s )
nr

with Re and h s being the Earth radius and radar platform T

Grtm (, ri ) Grrn (, ri ) d/ri3 sin(i )
i=nr ,i0 s
altitude, respectively. For a given time r within the data record RASRMIMOnm (r) =

window, ambiguous signals will come from the ranges of Ts

Grtm (, r) Grrn (, r) d/r3 sin(0 )
(14)
ic0 The RASR in the nth channel is evaluated by
ri = r + , i = 1, 2, . . . , nr (10)
2 PRF
1 
M
where i, the pulse number (i = 0 for the desired pulse), RASRMIMOn (r) = RASRMIMOnm (r). (15)
is positive for preceding interfering pulses and negative for M m=1
succeeding ones. The value i = nr is the number of pulses to
the horizon. Since each antenna has a distinct incidence angle, it may
It is well known that the RASR for a conventional SAR is yield a dierent RASR in each channel. Therefore, we use the
averaged RASR of the three channels for the MIMO SAR

nr

Gr2 (, ri ) d/ri3 sin(i )

1
T 3
i=nr ,i0 s
RASRSISO (r) =
(11) RASRMIMO (r) = RASRMIMOi (r) (16)
Gr2 (, r) d/r3 sin(0 ) 3 i=1
T s

where T s is the sampling window duration in each pulse In contrast, to achieve an equal swath width, the conventional
repetition interval. According to the imaging geometry, the SISO SAR and WTWR MIMO SAR have equal RASR, but the
incidence angles i and 0 are derived as latter may be impacted by the cross-correlation interferences
 due to unperfect waveform orthogonality.
 2
2 R2 2
R + h
r + (R + h ) e
i = sin1 1 i
e s e s
(12a) V. Simulation Results
Re 2ri (Re + h s )


Although MIMO SAR can be realized by ground based,
R + h  2
1 r + (Re + h s )2 R2e 2 airborne or spaceborne platforms, here we restrict ourselves
0 = sin (12b)
e s
1 to spaceborne platform only. Without loss of generality, a far-
Re 2r(Re + h s )
eld, free-space and single polarization mode is assumed. The
simulation system parameters are given in Table I. According
Obviously, the antenna pattern plays an important role in to the MIMO SAR antenna arrangements described previously,
determining the RASR performance. The MIMO SAR RASR three waveforms are transmitted by three antennas and their
including cross-correlation interferences can be similarly eval- returns are received by three antennas.
uated by
Under the assumption that all the transmitted waveforms
RASRMIMOnm (r) are perfectly orthogonal, Figure 2 gives the RASR performance
nr M

of each channel in the four dierent MIMO SAR antenna

Ts
mn ()Grtm (, ri ) Grrn (, ri ) d/ri3 sin(i ) arrangements. It can be noticed that better RASR performances
i=nr ,i0 m=1 are obtained when narrow-beam reception is employed. The
=

Ts
mm ()Grtm (, r) Grrn (, r) d/r3 sin(0 ) reason is that, for narrower receiver beamwidth, the normalized
(13) receive gain on range ambiguity will be much reduced. On
the other hand, the useful signal reected from the scene
where mn (), Grtm (, r), Grrn (, r) denote the waveform cross- will always be received by the maximum gain as multiple
correlation coecient between the waveforms sm (t) and sn (t) antennas are used. Since range ambiguity has happen in the
(when m = n it is the auto-correlation coecient), far-eld WTWR MIMO SAR, its RASR performance shown in Figure
patterns for the mth transmit antenna and nth receive antenna, 2(d) is unsatisfactory for practical applications. As the WTWR

198 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)

 10 10
28
channel 1 channel 1
32
30 channel 2 channel 2 15
15
channel 3 channel 3
32 34
channel 1
20
34 20 channel 1 channel 2
channel 2 36 channel 3
RASR [dB]

RASR [dB]

RASR [dB]

RASR [dB]
36
channel 3 25
38 25 38

40 30
40
30
42
42 35
44
35
46 44 40
48 40
1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550
slant range [km] slant range [km] slant range [km] slant range [km]

(a) NTNR MIMO SAR. (b) NTWR MIMO SAR. (c) WTNR MIMO SAR. (d) WTWR MIMO SAR.

Fig. 2: MIMO SAR RASR performances under assumption of perfect waveform orthogonality.

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