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Abstract

The present invention relates to a radar system which comprises a platform which moves over a number of objects. The number of objects can be very large and the objects can appear in the form of, for example, a ground surface. The platform supports radar equipment which reproduces the objects by means of synthetic aperture technique (SAR) via at least one antenna without requirements as to directivity or fractional bandwidth. Moreover, the movement of the platform is, during the recording of data for a SAR image, essentially rectilinear and uniform. The invention is characterized mainly in that it comprises a signal-processing device which records received radar echoes from each transmitted radar pulse and records or calculates the position of the used antenna or antennae, and which calculates a one-parameter quantity of two-dimensional SAR images as a function of two image co-ordinates where the parameter is the relative speed. Here use is made of the fact that each object, i.e. a radar echo with certain image co-ordinates, is reproduced at a maximum ratio of desired to undesired signal for a predetermined value of the relative speed parameter, which value is established to be the magnitude of the relative velocity vector between the object and the platform. In the calculation, the signal-processing device backprojects radar raw data in a hierarchical scheme, where each level is based only on the immediately preceding one, and where the summation of radar raw data occurs in the form of subapertures having a gradually increasing length.

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First Claim