ViSUAl-D (VIsual Sar Using ALl Dimensions), a 2004 DARPA/IXO seedling effort, is developing a capability for reliable high confidence ID from standoff ranges. Recent conflicts have demonstrated that the warfighter would greatly benefit from the ability to ID targets beyond visual and electro-optical ranges[1]. Forming optical-quality SAR images while exploiting full polarization, wide angles, and large bandwidth would be key evidence such a capability is achievable. Using data generated by the Xpatch EM scattering code, ViSUAl-D investigates all degrees of freedom available to the radar designer, including 6 GHz bandwidth, full polarization and angle sampling over 2π steradians (upper hemisphere), in order to produce a "literal" image or representation of the target. This effort includes the generation of a "Gold Standard" image that can be produced at X-band utilizing all available target data. This "Gold Standard" image of the backhoe will serve as a test bed for future more relevant military targets and their image development. The seedling team produced a public release data which was released at the 2004 SPIE conference, as well as a 3D "Gold Standard" backhoe image using a 3D image formation algorithm. This paper describes the full backhoe data set, the image formation algorithm, the visualization process and the resulting image.

Date Published: 19 May 2005
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 5808, Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XII, (19 May 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.609907

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5808:
Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XII
Edmund G. Zelnio; Frederick D. Garber, Editor(s)