Synthetic aperture FM-CW radar applied to the detection of objects buried in snowpack

This paper presents the principle of synthetic aperture frequency modulated continuous wave (FM-CW) radar and demonstrates the detection results of several objects buried in natural snowpack using the radar system. First, the synthetic aperture technique is explained with emphasis placed on showing that the Fourier transformed beat signal obtained by the FM-CW radar is equivalent to one kind of Fresnel hologram, which leads us to use SAR technique. Then a radar system operative in the microwave L-band is explored to detect objects buried in natural snowpack. Several detection results are presented demonstrating the potential capability of high resolution imaging in the azimuth direction, comparing with real aperture images.