Dual-channel SAR moving target detector based on WVD and FAC

Along-track interferometry (ATI) and displaced-phase-center antenna (DPCA) are very popular techniques in the application of dual-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ground moving target indication (GMTI). However, both methods have their own limitations. The undesirable noise may contaminate the interferometric phase, and thus bring about false alarms in the ATI output. The very strong or highly heterogeneous clutter may induce the significant difference between channels, and thus DPCA may lack robustness to this kind of clutter. To find a method robust to both problems, we present a novel two-step GMTI algorithm for dual-channel SAR. (1) The first step is named weighted velocity detector (WVD). By jointly considering the strength and velocity of targets, this detector can eliminate the impact of isolated noise. (2) The second step is called false alarm canceller (FAC). By setting an additional threshold, FAC removes the remaining clutter-related false alarms and has a good detection performance. Equipped with WVD and FAC, the ground moving targets can be indicated with less false alarms. In this paper, the performance of this proposed algorithm is fully validated by the comparative experimental results.