First multi-channel results of the airborne SAR/GMTI sensor PAMIR-Ka

Fraunhofer FHR is developing a multi-channel airborne Ka-band sensor for synthetic aperture radar imaging and ground moving target indication operation, PAMIR-Ka. In a final state, the sensor will be equipped with active electronically scanned array antennas for a two-dimensional transmit (TX) and receive (RX) beam steering. At present, the sensor uses a standard gain horn TX antenna and four horn antennas to acquire the scene echos with parallel RX channels. The horn antennas are statically mounted for stripmap operation. In a measurement campaign at Aachen in Germany, the sensor acquired data of an urban ground scene including some moving objects with an RX antenna configuration that allows both dual-polarimetric and along track interferometric data analyses. The paper presents these first multi-channel results of PAMIR-Ka.