Traffic Monitoring with SAR: Implications of Target Acceleration

Abstract:
In this paper the problem of reliable along-track velocity estimation is addressed. It is known that the neglection of across-track accelerations can bias the estimates of along-track velocities, but up to now it is unknown which vehicle accelerations appear in real traffic scenarios. On this account an experiment to measure accelerations was conducted. The measurement results, which are presented and discussed in this paper, imply that accelerations must not be neglected in the along-track velocity estimation step if accurate estimates are required. Finally, some basic ideas are given which enable a reliable separation of along-track velocity and across-track acceleration and so improve the estimation accuracy.