The paper presents results from a bistatic SAR experiment conducted using two airborne SAR systems operating in the high VHF- and low UHF-band. The Swedish SAR system LORA operated together with the French SAR system SETHI and collected data in different bistatic geometries in the frequency band 222-460 MHz and using HH-polarization. The two SAR systems were synchronized using the 1PPS GPS-signal. Data were collected during four flight missions over the main test site with forested terrain and buildings as well as controlled target deployments. A fifth mission was included over a second test site with an extensive data base of forest parameters but without target deployments. The bistatic radar data have been processed to SAR images and first analysis completed. Results show significant suppression of strong forest clutter and that the effect increases with bistatic elevation angle. The clutter reduction is observed in areas with dominating double-bounce scattering. Data analysis shows that forest clutter can be suppressed by 10 dB for a bistatic elevation angle of 10°.

Date Published: 17 May 2011
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 8051, Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XVIII, 80510H (17 May 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.884143

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8051:
Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XVIII
Edmund G. Zelnio; Frederick D. Garber, Editor(s)