Geostationary Real-Time 3D Polarimetric RADAR Imaging by Orbital Angular Momentum Interferometry and Multi-Chromatic Analysis

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel high-resolution, real-time geostationary polarimetric radar imaging system using orbital angular momentum interferometry, multi-chromatic analysis, and tomography to achieve detailed 3D imaging.

Contribution

It introduces a new radar imaging approach combining OAM interferometry, multi-chromatic analysis, and tomography for high-resolution geostationary applications.

Findings

Design of a planar vortex antenna for Geo applications

Successful synthesis of 3D radar images using OAM and MCA

Resolution depends on OAM value and frequency bandwidths

Abstract

We design the proof of concept for high-resolution (HR) real-time (RT), Geosynchronous and Geostationary (Geo) Polarimetric (Pol) using orbital angular momentum (OAM) interferometry - radio detection and ranging (RADAR) (HR-RT-GeoPolInt-OAM-RADAR) and multi-chromatic analysis (MCA) extended to Tomography (HR-RT-GeoPolInt-OAM-MCA-TomoRADAR). The OAM interferometry communication channel is generated by two fixed sources distanced by a given spatial baseline and used for range-azimuth synthesis. The frequency channel, instead, is used to provide information about the altitude. Finally, the information encoded in the polarization of the electromagnetic (EM) waves, which is related to the Spin Angular Momentum (SAM), is used to synthesize full-Pol RADAR images, with technological redundancy. Here we present the design of a planar vortex antenna, tailored for Geo applications, where the imaging system transmits ''ad-hoc`` structured wave packets using an incremental stepped chirp strategy and with single-mode OAM linearly incremented modulation. We assign the resolutions of each dimension to three bands assumed by the EM wave. The radial and tangential components received from the HR-RT-GeoPolInt-OAM communication channel backscattered signals are used to focus, through fast-Fourier transform (FFT) techniques, a range-azimuth image that belongs to a single epoch at a given constant frequency. Each OAM fast-time RADAR image is separated in frequency by using MCA. This procedure is repeated for all the epochs of the entire stepped-frequency chirp. Once each two-dimensional image is synthesized, they are co-registered, and the HR-RT-GeoPolInt-OAM-MCA-TomoRADAR slices are focused in altitude by using FFT techniques. Range-azimuth and tomographic resolutions depend on the OAM value and the stepped frequency chirp bandwidths.