Resolving full-wave through-wall transmission effects in multi-static synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

Through-wall synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging is of significant interest for security purposes, in particular when using multi-static SAR systems consisting of multiple distributed radar transmitters and receivers to improve resolution and the ability to recognise objects. Yet there is a significant challenge in forming focused, useful images due to multiple scattering effects through walls, whereas standard SAR imaging has an inherent single scattering assumption. This may be exacerbated with multi-static collections, since different scattering events will be observed from each angle and the data may not coherently combine well in a naive manner. To overcome this, we propose an image formation method which resolves full-wave effects through an approximately known wall or other arbitrary obstacle, which itself has some unknown ‘nuisance’ parameters that are determined as part of the reconstruction to provide well focused images. The method is more flexible and realistic than existing methods which treat a single wall as a flat layered medium, whilst being significantly computationally cheaper than full-wave methods, strongly motivated by practical considerations for through-wall SAR.