Clutter Effects on Ground Moving Target Velocity Estimation with SAR Along-Track Interferometry

Abstract—The SAR interferogram, defined as the product of the first channel and the complex conjugate of the second, is one way of comparing two SAR channels. When the two subapertures are aligned along the flight path, targets with nonzero radial velocities can be detected by exploiting the phase information of the interferogram. This paper examines the effect of clutter interference on the interferometric phase and provides a simple method for mitigating the clutter contamination by using time-frequency (TF) analysis techniques and a velocity-offset matched filter (VOMF). Both simulated and airborne results are presented.