Modeling and simulation of synthetic aperture radars in MATLAB

Abstract

The goal of this research is to produce a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) simulation in MATLAB that will provide a framework to investigate the effects of signal type and emission parameters on the resolution and accuracy of the simulated image. A total of three simulations were created for this research. The first two, which are range imaging and cross-range imaging, are the fundamental components of SAR and were vital to understanding the complexities of SAR. The signal types to be studied are a sinusoidal rectangular pulse, a linearly frequency modulated chirp, and band-limited Gaussian white noise. The simulations show that it is possible to produce usable images from each of the signal types examined, with the LFM chirp signal consistently producing the greatest resolution. Using noise as an input signal produced an exciting result with results almost on par with a sinusoidal pulse.