UAV-borne repeat-pass SAR interferometry and SAR tomography with a compact L-band SAR system

Abstract:
In this contribution, we present SAR image focusing, interferometric, and first tomographic processing results computed from repeat-pass SAR data sets acquired on-board of a vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV): the data was acquired using a novel compact FMCW L-band SAR system in two repeat-pass SAR campaigns flown on 2019-02-13 and 2019-03-28, respectively. In these demonstration campaigns, the Γ L-band SAR system was deployed and operated on Aeroscout’s VTOL UAV Scout B1-100. Repeat-pass interferograms and coherence maps with a temporal baseline of up to 43 days are presented and a tomographic profile obtained from short-term repeat-pass measurements is shown. The results demonstrate the feasibility of UAV-borne repeat-pass SAR interferometry and SAR tomography at L-band.