Motion measurement for high-accuracy real-time airborne SAR

A real-time airborne synthetic aperture radar requires accurate measurement of the antenna at high and low frequencies to produce well-focused images with minimal target location errors. Sandia National Laboratories achieves accurate motion measurement by updating a navigation solution derived from an inertial measurement unit with global positioning system measurements via a unique Kalman filter. An overview of the motion measurement design and implementation is presented for the Lynx and Rapid Terrain Visualization radars, as well as results from a variety of experiments.