An Experimental Evaluation of MIMO-SAR Imaging with FMCW Radar

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging is a widely used technique to generate two-dimensional and three-dimensional imaging based on the principle of moving sensors. This paper presents an experimental investigation of SAR imaging using an IWR6843ISK frequency modulated continuous waveform(FMCW) radar sensor on a moving platform and providing the stationary targets. In this experiment, the moving platform is used to recreate images with a higher spatial resolution based on a two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (2D-FFT) algorithm. Three different configurations are explored, namely: SAR, single input multiple output SAR (SIMO-SAR), and multiple input and multiple outputs SAR for imaging multiple targets within the vicinity. The real-time data is collected by moving the radar from 1-21m and observing two different stationary targets. The received data is processed using the 2D-FFT algorithm and obtaining the imaging for various configurations. The experimental results reveal that target detection is accomplished for all three configurations and comparable with ground truth. The MIMO-SAR outperforms and is a suitable candidate for automotive SAR imaging.