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High resolution for software-defined GPS-based SAR imaging using waveform-modulated range-compressed pulse: field experimental demonstration

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Abstract

This paper presents an experimental demonstration with respect to a high-range-resolution imaging scheme for software-defined receiver-based passive GPS-based SAR, and a signal processing scheme for imaging is proposed correspondingly. In the proposed scheme, to reduce the computational complexity and high-memory requirement for receiver, GPS signals are down-converted to baseband for digitized collection at first. After performing range compression, the region of interest is selected based on the numbers of detected compressed pulses. Thereafter, the detected compressed pulses are up-sampled, modulated by a waveform with the frequency larger than bandwidth value and then spectrum-equalized for obtaining high-resolution range-compressed signals. The field results obtained from both land and ocean scenarios indicate that compared to the conventional signal processing scheme for imaging, indeed the proposed scheme can provide a significantly lower range ambiguity around the scene center; compared with the authors’ previous related work (Zheng et al. in Sensors, 2017. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071496), the proposed scheme is obviously more computationally efficient.

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Acknowledgements

The research was funded by Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) Competitive Earmarked Research Grant (Project No: PolyU 152151/17E), the research fund from the Research Institute of Sustainable Urban Development, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the research grant from Education Department of Hunan Province, China (Project No: 18C0758), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (61903049). We are very thankful to Mr. Yang Yang and Prof. Wu Chen from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for providing the field GPS C/A code signal data for the experimental demonstration in this paper and helping with the respective technical issue involved in the experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Electronic Communication and Electrical Engineering, Changsha University, Hongshan Road # 98, Changsha, China

    Yu Zheng, Peidong Zhu & Peng Wu

  2. Department of Land Surveying and Geo-informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Yu Zheng

  3. College of Electronic Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China

    Zhuxian Zhang, Lu Feng & Peng Wu

  4. College of Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics, Changsha University, Hongshan Road # 98, Changsha, China

    Caixia Huang

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  1. Yu Zheng
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  2. Zhuxian Zhang
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  3. Lu Feng
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  4. Caixia Huang
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  5. Peidong Zhu
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  6. Peng Wu
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Correspondence to Yu Zheng.

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Zheng, Y., Zhang, Z., Feng, L. et al. High resolution for software-defined GPS-based SAR imaging using waveform-modulated range-compressed pulse: field experimental demonstration. SIViP 14, 655–663 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-019-01598-y

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