Demonstration of advanced reconnaissance techniques with the airborne SAR/GMTI sensor PAMIR

PAMIR (Phased Array Multifunctional Imaging Radar) is an experimental airborne radar system that has been designed and built by the Research Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR) of Forschungsgesellschaft für Angewandte Naturwissenschaften (FGAN). The goal is to meet the growing demands for future reconnaissance systems with respect to flexibility and multi-mode operation by the use of an electronically steerable phased array antenna. The X-band system with a bandwidth of 1.8 GHz serves as a platform for different tasks. One of the main objectives is to demonstrate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging at a very high resolution and for a long range. The fine resolution will also be applied for inverse SAR (ISAR) imaging of ground moving targets. Moreover, five parallel receiving channels allow array processing techniques like ground moving target indication (GMTI) via space–time adaptive processing, electronic counter-counter-measures and interferometric SAR with a very high 3D-resolution. A multi-channel scan-MTI mode with a range resolution adapted to the target size allows for a wide area GMTI operation that can be complemented by target tracking. Together with the predecessor system AER-II, operating at a frequency band contained in that of PAMIR, the possibility of experimental investigation of bistatic SAR is given. SAR images of large urban areas and ISAR images of moving objects, both with finest resolution down to the sub-decimetre scale, are presented. Results of GMTI in a wide area scanning mode and broadband bistatic experiments including true bistatic SAR processing are shown as well.