Radar signatures of road vehicles: airborne SAR experiments

The German radar satellite TerraSAR-X is a high resolution, dual receive antenna SAR satellite, which will be launched in spring 2006. Since it will have the capability to measure the velocity of moving targets, the acquired interferometric data can be useful for traffic monitoring applications on a global scale. DLR has started already the development of an automatic and operational processing system which will detect cars, measure their speed and assign them to a road. Statistical approaches are used to derive the vehicle detection algorithm, which require the knowledge of the radar signatures of vehicles, especially under consideration of the geometry of the radar look direction and the vehicle orientation. Simulation of radar signatures is a very difficult task due to the lack of realistic models of vehicles. In this paper the radar signatures of the parking cars are presented. They are estimated experimentally from airborne E-SAR X-band data, which have been collected during flight campaigns in 2003-2005. Several test cars of the same type placed in carefully selected orientation angles and several over-flights with different heading angles made it possible to cover the whole range of aspect angles from 0° to 180°. The large synthetic aperture length or beam width angle of 7° can be divided into several looks. Thus processing of each look separately allows to increase the angle resolution. Such a radar signature profile of one type of vehicle over the whole range of aspect angles in fine resolution can be used further for the verification of simulation studies and for the performance prediction for traffic monitoring with TerraSAR-X.

[1]  Josef Mittermayer,et al.  Conceptual studies for exploiting the TerraSAR-X dual receive antenna , 2003, IGARSS 2003. 2003 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. Proceedings (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37477).

[2]  R. Bamler,et al.  SAR Data Acquisition and Image Formation , 1993 .

[3]  Kostas Papathanassiou,et al.  Overview of interferometric data acquisition and processing modes of the experimental airborne SAR system of DLR , 1999, IEEE 1999 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. IGARSS'99 (Cat. No.99CH36293).

[4]  Martin Ruhé,et al.  Verkehrsmonitoring mit dem deutschen Fernerkundungssatelliten TerraSAR-X , 2004 .

[5]  Marie Lachaise,et al.  Traffic monitoring with serial images from airborne cameras , 2006 .

[6]  P. Reinartz,et al.  Estimation of along-track velocity of road vehicles in SAR data , 2005, SPIE Remote Sensing.

[7]  Wendell A. Gibby,et al.  Data Acquisition and Image Formation , 2000 .

[8]  Franz J. Meyer,et al.  An Airborne SAR Experiment For Ground Moving Target Identification , 2005 .

[9]  Franz J. Meyer,et al.  Results from an airborne SAR GMTI experiment supporting TerraSAR-X traffic processor development , 2005, Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2005. IGARSS '05..

[10]  R. Bamler,et al.  A plea for radar brightness , 1994, Proceedings of IGARSS '94 - 1994 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[11]  Franz J. Meyer,et al.  The feasibility of traffic monitoring with TerraSAR-X - analyses and consequences , 2004, IGARSS 2004. 2004 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[12]  S. Suchandta,et al.  AN AIRBORNE SAR EXPERIMENT FOR GROUND MOVING TARGET IDENTIFICATION , 2005 .

[13]  S. Buckreuss,et al.  The terraSAR-X satellite project , 2003, IGARSS 2003. 2003 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. Proceedings (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37477).

[14]  Ulrich Steinbrecher,et al.  Traffic monitoring with TerraSAR-X , 2005 .