HIGH-RESOLUTION, CONTIGUOUS SAR IMAGING USING CO-LOCATED MIMO ARRAYS: EXPERIMENTAL PROOF OF CONCEPT

The paper introduces a novel Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging concept with linear Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar arrays, which are becoming prolific for short- range sensing in various emerging application spaces. Specifically, the concept makes use of Digital Beam-Forming (DBF) techniques that are enabled in those systems to provide contiguous azimuth imaging, as in stripmap SAR, but with a fine spatial resolution matching that of a spotlight SAR. The main principles of the concept are analytically derived and experimentally verified in laboratory conditions with calibrated targets, as a springboard for a more in-depth system investigation.