FULLY THREE-DIMENSIONAL UAV SAR IMAGING WITH MULTI-AZIMUTH-ANGLE OBSERVATION

The multi-azimuth-angle (MAA) UAV SAR is introduced in this paper. Compared with the traditional TomoSAR that rebuilds the 3-D scene only from the boresight aspect, the MAA UAV SAR can rebuild the 3-D scene from different multi azimuth angles and then provide multiple or even full aspects 3-D image by the novel 3-D image formation algorithm presented in this paper. Firstly, the MAA UAV SAR is introduced, followed by the 2-D imaging algorithm to focus the raw data. Then, a novel squinted tomography method is provided to obtain squinted 3-D image using multiple 2-D images with the same azimuth angle. Finally, the squinted 3-D images are geolocated and fused to construct a full 3-D image. Imaging results are provided to demonstrate the better performance of the MAA SAR.