Ultra-wideband imaging radar to reveal obstacles concealed in vegetation to improve navigation of unmanned ground vehicles

Cross‐range resolution improvement in forward‐looking imaging radar using autoregressive model‐based data extrapolation

“…The performance of the proposed method was verified through a simulation and an experiment using the FIRA system, which was developed by the Agency for Defense Development of South Korea [3].…”

“…A few studies have investigated FIRA as a potential asset to support the autonomous navigation of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) [3]. FIRA is able to detect visually hidden obstacles in vegetation.…”

“…Therefore we used an anti‐podal Vivaldi antenna with high gain, relatively wide bandwidth and simple structure. It is easy to fabricate and has a small volume [3].…”

“…The range resolution of a radar image is directly related to the bandwidth of the transmitting signal, and the cross‐range resolution is determined by the effective length of the antenna aperture [2]. In real aperture array imaging systems used for forward‐looking imaging applications [3–5], the target information can be sampled in a parallel manner by a real aperture antenna array during single‐snapshot illumination. However, the cross‐range resolution is severely limited by short length of the physical array.…”

Omega-K Algorithm Using Plane Wave Approximation for Forward-Looking Imaging Radar

“…Although SAR systems have usually been operated from aircraft or orbiting satellite platforms, ground-based SAR (GB-SAR) systems have also been proposed as portable geotechnical instruments [1]. In some applications, vehicle-mounted forward-looking imaging radar (FIRA) using a real aperture has been employed to inspect forward ground surfaces [2][3][4][5]. A FIRA system installed on an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) has also been proposed for visualizing forward areas through vegetation [3].…”