Implementation of Real-time Automotive SAR Imaging

This paper presents a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system and processing algorithm for automotive applications using a short range vehicle-mounted Frequency Modulation Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar. Aiming at real-time high resolution vehicle-borne SAR imaging, the algorithm combines the advantages of the high accurate focusing of the wavenumber domain algorithms with high precision motion compensation by utilizing only the knowledge of the vehicle's velocity and angular velocity. We present measurement results collected during various driving tests with an experimental 79GHz synthetic aperture radar. The results indicate that the proposed method could produce SAR imagery of high resolution (0.0825 m0.0825 m) with detection range of 16m in real time, which is suitable for automotive applications.