Ground-UAV platform geometries for radar imaging

This paper provides a summary of comparative analysis pertaining to a systems trade study with platform geometries that encompass either one, two, or three distributed RF sensing platforms. The discussion is focused on analysis of a basic set of UAV trajectory parameters associated with performing sky-looking radar imaging. The baseline one-platform case corresponds to one ground-based radar transmitter/receiver. The two-platform case involves one ground-based radar transmitter/receiver and one UAV with a passive receiver and the three-platform case involves one ground-based radar transmitter and two UAV's each equipped with a passive receiver. This notional analysis is conducted with a narrow-bandwidth waveform within the L-Band region of the radar spectrum and notional parameters of the moon are adopted for the object-of-interest for radar imaging. Results indicate that the trajectories of the UAV's can be pre-selected to improve comparative radar imaging performance.