Optical moving target indicator for synthetic aperture radar images

An optical indicator is designed to detect the moving targets in complex-valued synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and estimate their azimuth velocity components. The indicator consists of two subsystems, and each of them is composed of one phase-only filter and two cylindrical lenses. The subsystems refocus the SAR image by changing the parameters of the phase-only filters to get two refocused images in which the background is defocused to the same extent while the moving targets are defocused differently. The indicator involved detects moving targets by comparing the sharpness of two defocused SAR images piece-by-piece, and then estimates the azimuth velocity of each detected target from its sharpness difference curve. The effectiveness of the optical architecture is investigated, and the proposal is confirmed by theoretical analysis and experiments with simulated and field data. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.