关注公众号

关注公众号

手机扫码查看

手机查看

喜欢作者

打赏方式

微信支付微信支付
支付宝支付支付宝支付
×

合成孔径雷达原理(五)

2020.10.06

Lay Over

The direction of relief displacement is different for optical and radar systems. A camera sees the relief displaced away from the nadir point while the SAR see the relief displaced towards the nadir line. This is illustrated in Figure 13.

theory_fig13.gif

Figure 13. A comparison of relief displacement for (a) optical and (b) SAR systems.

Shadows

The other effect of vertical structures is to produce shadows in the SAR image. Figures 12 and 13 illustrate this effect quite well. Because the radar beam is at an angle, there will be a region of ground behind the vertical structure that the beam cannot reach. Thus for the time period corresponding to that ground area, no echoes will be returned. This results in a black area on the image which is called a shadow. From Figure 12, the length of the shadow is calculated as

theory_eqn34.gif

in ground range presentation and

theory_eqn35.gif

in slant range presentation. Thus the length of the shadow is proportional to the height of the vertical structure and increases the further away that structure is from the nadir line or the lower the SAR antenna is.

Image of a Slope

The effects of imaging sloping terrain with radar are illustrated in Figure 14. Due to the vertical height, relief displacement, lay over and shadows can result, depending on the steepness of the slope. Slopes facing the nadir line can exhibit the effects of (a) lay over, (c) foreshortening and the in-between case (b) for which the front slope appears only as a line. Case (b) only occurs when the slope is parallel to the nadir line and the elevation angle gamma.gif equals the slope angle alpha.gif exactly.

Slopes facing away from the nadir line can be (a) fully imaged, (c) hidden in the radar shadow or (b) strangely imaged as the radar beam just skims along the surface. For case (b), slight irregularities on the slope's surface would have magnified effects. For instance, a bump near the peak would block the radar from the rest of the slope causing a shadow to appear in the image.

theory_fig14.gif

Figure 14. Image effects produced by sloping terrain.

All of these slope effects can be found in Figure 15--a subsection of the SAR image 82LWERS1 (copyright.gif ESA) from the ERS-1 satellite, provided with EarthView.

theory_fig15.gif

Figure 15. ERS-1 SAR image illustrating the effects of uneven terrain (copyright.gif ESA).

Surface Interaction with the Radar Beam

When an electromagnetic wave reflects off a surface, three basic properties of the surface come into play--the dielectric constant (or permittivity epsilon.gif), the roughness (rms height relative to a smooth surface) and the local slope.

Assuming that the EM wave is traveling through a medium that is homogeneous (properties do not vary from point to point), isotropic (properties are the same in all directions from any given point) and non-magnetic, then from Maxwell's equations we can express the complex electric field vector as

theory_eqn36.gif

where A is the amplitude vector, z is the distance traveled in time t and phi.gif is a phase offset. The angular frequency omega.gif is

theory_eqn37.gif

where fc is the carrier frequency (the frequency emitted from the antenna) and lambda.gif is the wavelength. The expression for k' is

theory_eqn38.gif

where k is the wavenumber and epsilon.gifr is the relative permittivity (also called the dielectric constant) of the medium (epsilon.gifr = epsilon.gif / epsilon.gif0 where epsilon.gif is the permittivity of the medium and epsilon.gif0 is the permittivity of free space). It should be noted that epsilon.gifr is a function of the frequency of the EM wave. The relative permeability mu.gifr has been assumed to be equal to 1 which is accurate enough for microwave frequencies.

The polarization of the electric field E is the direction of the amplitude vector A at some instant in time. For a linearly polarized wave, the direction of A is fixed in one plane relative to the direction of propagation. An elliptically polarized wave has an electric field consisting of two different components oriented along orthogonal axes such that

theory_eqn39.gif

resulting in the total amplitude vector A slowly rotating about the z-axis. If Ax = Ay and [phi.gif1 - phi.gif2] = pi.gif/2, then the wave becomes circularly polarized.

An EM wave interacting with a surface is called scattering. There are two types—surface scattering and volume scattering. Surface scattering occurs at the interface between two different homogeneous media such as the atmosphere and the Earth's surface. Volume scattering is the result of interaction with particles within a non-homogeneous medium.

Surface Scattering

A smooth surface acts as a mirror, reflecting the EM wave at an angle equal and opposite to the incidence angle nu.gif. Thus a smooth level surface is seen as black in the SAR image since the echoes never reach the antenna. The Rayleigh criterion defines a surface as smooth if

theory_eqn40.gif

where h is the surface roughness, defined as the root-mean-square (rms) height relative to a perfectly smooth surface, lambda.gif is the wavelength of the wave and nu.gif is the angle of incidence. Peake and Oliver (1971) modified this criterion by defining upper and lower values of h for surfaces of intermediate roughness to obtain a smoothness criterion of

theory_eqn41.gif

Using the Rayleigh criterion, for instance, when RADARSAT is operating at 5.3 GHz with an incidence angle of 50º, level terrain with h < 9 mm will show up as solid black.

Specular Scattering

Any returns from a smooth level surface are due to specular scattering, in which the EM wave's angle of incidence is equal and opposite to the angle of reflection and the transmission through the surface obeys Snell's Law


推荐
关闭