A NOVEL MIMO SAR TRANSMISSION SCHEME FOR RESTORING REPEATED EQUIVALENT PHASE CENTERS

Multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) radar has drawn much attention in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) due to the possession of more degrees of freedom (DOFs). However, there are some repeated equivalent phase centers (EPCs) caused by the same wave path have no contribution to the improvement of DOFs. To this end, a novel interpulse phase coding and multi-carrier (IPCMC) transmission scheme is investigated to restored repeated EPCs. Furthermore, an advanced range ambiguity separation method is proposed based on the increased efficient EPCs. Finally, distributed targets simulation experiments are performed and the experiment results illustrate that the range ambiguity suppression performance is significantly improved due to the restored EPCs.