Bistatic linear antenna array SAR for moving target detection, location, and imaging with two passive airborne radars

In this paper, we propose a bistatic linear array synthetic aperture radar (BLA-SAR) system for moving target detection, location, and imaging. In the BLA-SAR system, a geostationary satellite is used as a transmitter, and two airborne linear array radars are used as passive receivers, where the transmitted waveforms from the geostationary satellite may have two different carrier frequencies, two linear array antennas on two different airplanes may be equipped with different spacings, or two airplanes may fly with two different velocities. It is shown that, using the BLA-SAR, not only the stationary clutter can be suppressed but also locations of both slow and fast moving targets can be accurately estimated. Furthermore, an effective BLA-SAR algorithm of moving target imaging is also proposed. Lastly, some numerical experiments are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the BLA-SAR.