System trade analysis for an ultra-wideband forward imaging radar

In support of the U.S. Army vision for increased mobility, survivability, and lethality, the Army Research Laboratory is currently developing a new version of the low frequency ultra-wideband (UWB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to support forward imaging. One of the goals in the development of this version of the radar is to make it affordable. This paper presents a study of various forward imaging radar configurations that could be employed in a forward imaging radar system to achieve good imaging resolution with a reasonable number of transmitters/receivers. This study provided us with insights to efficiently configure our transmitter/receiver array. In this study, we examined various radar configurations such as monostatic and some variations of bistatic cases. We provide the analysis of the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image resolution for these configurations and show the effectiveness of the bistatic configuration with only two transmitters at the ends of the physical array. In addition to the analysis, we also provide simulation results to demonstrate the expected imaging resolutions with respect to the radar configuration and the imaging geometry. Finally, we also consider the use of two squinted transmitters at the two ends and exploit the forward motion of the vehicle to form image on the two sides.