Multistatic echo imaging in remote sensing and diagnostic medicine

Summary form only given. The problem of echo imaging when the imaging system is composed of a group of phased arrays with arbitrary coordinates in the spatial domain (multistatic configuration) has been addressed. Each phased array has a finite aperture and is used for transmitting, receiving, or both functions. A receiving phased array may make a synchronous or asynchronous detection of the backscattered signal. The task in this imaging problem is to integrate the data collected by the phased arrays and relate them to the object under study. The imaging problem is first formulated for a plane wave source in a bistatic configuration. These results are extended for the radiation patterns of a multistatic imaging system. Methods for processing the backscattered signals to reduce the artifacts in the reconstructed image caused by the finite size of the phased arrays have been developed. Phase processing techniques have been examined for the case in which the backscattered signal is detected in a noncoherent environment. It has been shown that these array processing principles can be utilized to formulate a system model and inversion for synthetic aperture radar imaging that incorporates wavefront curvature.