Moving Target SAR Imaging Using Planar Arrays And Multidimensional Chinese Remainder Theorem (MD-CRT)--Part II: Two Subarray Designs

2026-06-12

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of ambiguity and insufficient robustness in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging of moving targets by proposing two co-scaled planar subarray configurations based on the multidimensional Chinese Remainder Theorem (MD-CRT). By leveraging a shared integer frequency vector, the proposed designs achieve unambiguous imaging while simultaneously relaxing the sufficient conditions for robust signal recovery and tightening the reconstruction error bounds—all without compromising the unambiguous range. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the non-separable planar array geometry outperforms conventional separable configurations. Under identical platform size and minimum antenna spacing constraints, the proposed approach significantly enhances both robust recovery performance and imaging quality compared to one-dimensional arrays.

Abstract

Based on the framework proposed in Part I, the Part II of this two-part paper investigates two-subarray designs for moving target SAR imaging using planar antenna arrays and the multidimensional Chinese remainder theorem (MD-CRT). In this Part II, we focus on the performance analysis and the detailed two planar subarray designs. In particular, we study a common-scaling two-subarray design, under which the two subarrays share the same scaling factor in the MD-CRT formulation. Under this design, ambiguity resolution can be performed on a common integer frequency vector. As a result, the same unambiguous range as in the general two-subarray framework in Part~I is preserved, while the sufficient conditions for robust recovery become weaker and the corresponding reconstruction error bounds become tighter. Within this common-scaling design, we compare the proposed planar array framework with a conventional separated scheme, in which the motion-induced cross-range shift is recovered by a one-dimensional CRT-based method and the target height is estimated by cross-track interferometric processing. Under the same platform size and minimum antenna spacing constraints, the proposed planar array framework can realize the common-scaling design, whereas the corresponding one-dimensional non-uniform linear array scheme does not admit such a design. With this design, the planar array framework leads to a weaker sufficient condition for robust recovery and thus performs better in moving target imaging. We also compare several planar array designs under fixed platform size and minimum antenna spacing. The analysis shows that recovery performance depends not only on the number of antennas but also on the array geometry. In particular, non-separable planar array geometries can provide better robustness than separable ones when their antenna numbers are comparable.

Problem

• Moving Target SAR Imaging
• Planar Arrays
• Multidimensional Chinese Remainder Theorem
• Ambiguity Resolution
• Array Geometry

Innovation

• planar array
• multidimensional Chinese remainder theorem
• common-scaling design
• moving target SAR imaging
• array geometry