Ground Moving Target Indication in SAR Images With Symmetric Doppler Views

A new algorithm is presented to indicate ground moving targets in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Two symmetric SAR images, one is referred to as a positive Doppler view and the other as a negative Doppler view, are generated by refocusing the positive Doppler plane and the negative Doppler plane, respectively. In the two Doppler views, the backgrounds have the same intensity except that their azimuth resolution becomes half of that of the original image, but the moving targets appear at different positions and have different intensities due to their different Doppler contents arising from nonzero Doppler centroid caused by across-track motion. Therefore, moving targets can be indicated by the patch-by-patch intensity comparison of the two Doppler views. The results of the simulated and real data confirm that this algorithm is effective and efficient.