Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.a. Con Unico Socio

Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.a.

Thales Alena Space Italia S.p.a. Con Unico Socio

Diego Calabrese

Giacinto Losquadro

Domenico Giancristofaro

Fabrizio Impagnatiello

Luca Soli

Roberto Venturini

The present invention concerns a method for performing SAR acquisitions, which comprises performing, in a time division fashion, SAR acquisitions of areas of a swath of earth's surface by means of a SAR system carried by an air or space platform; wherein performing SAR acquisitions in a time division fashion includes contemporaneously acquiring, in each pulse repetition interval, a plurality of areas of the swath that are separated in azimuth; and wherein the areas acquired in T successive pulse repetition intervals form an azimuth-continuous portion of said swath, T being an integer greater than one.

Method for performing SAR acquisitions with enhanced azimuth resolution

The invention concerns a monitoring method that comprises coupling in an integral manner at least one electromagnetic mirror of passive type with a given target to be monitored and monitoring the given target; wherein monitoring the given target includes: acquiring, via one or more synthetic aperture radar(s) installed on board one or more satellites and/or one or more aerial platforms, SAR images of a given area of the earth's surface where the given target is located; and determining, via a processing unit, a movement of the electromagnetic mirror on the basis of the acquired SAR images.

SAR-based monitoring of non-visible or non-always-visible or partially visible targets and associated monitoring, critical situation detection and early warning systems and methods

The present invention concerns a localization method for locating a target that is coupled with a locator transponder associated with a permanent identification code permanently assigned to said locator transponder; the localization method comprising: upon reception of a user request for locating the target, transmitting, by a paging system or by a radar-based system, a spread spectrum paging signal carrying the permanent identification code and a temporary identification code temporarily assigned to the locator transponder, wherein said temporary identification code is shorter than said permanent identification code; receiving, by the locator transponder, the spread spectrum paging signal and extracting, by said locator transponder, the temporary identification code carried by said spread spectrum paging signal received; transmitting, by the radar-based system, radar signals towards one or more areas of earth's surface or sky, and receiving, by said radar-based system, echo signals from said one or more areas of the earth's surface or sky; upon reception by the locator transponder of one or more radar signals transmitted by the radar-based system, generating and transmitting, by said locator transponder, a sequence of watermarked radar echo signals in which a spread spectrum watermarking signal is embedded, wherein said spread spectrum watermarking signal carries the temporary identification code extracted.

Innovative locator system, related low power consumption regenerative transponder and related localization method and service

A SAR imaging method for interferometric analyses is provided, including: receiving raw SAR data related to two or more SAR acquisitions of one and the same area of the earth's surface carried out by one or more synthetic aperture radars; and processing the raw SAR data to generate SAR images. For each SAR acquisition, the respective raw SAR data is processed based on two different sets of processing parameters: a first set that is the same for all the SAR acquisitions and which comprises focusing Doppler parameters computed based on physical Doppler parameters related to all the SAR acquisitions; and a second set which comprises respective radiometric equalization Doppler parameters related to the SAR acquisition and computed based on respective physical Doppler parameters related to the SAR acquisition. Processing includes: focusing the raw SAR data related to all SAR acquisitions based on the focusing Doppler parameters and, for each SAR acquisition, applying a respective radiometric equalization, based on the respective radiometric equalization Doppler parameters, to the respective SAR data to compensate for possible differences in pointing of the synthetic aperture radar(s), without degrading azimuth resolution and without introducing radiometric distortions.

SAR imaging method for interferometric analyses

A SAR imaging method performs N SAR acquisitions in stripmap mode of the earth's surface using a synthetic aperture radar transported by an aerial or satellite platform and including a single, non-partitioned antenna and a single receiver coupled thereto. All N SAR acquisitions are performed using the same predetermined elevation angle relative to the nadir of the synthetic aperture radar and using a respective squint angle relative to the flight direction of the synthetic aperture radar. Radar transmission and reception operations are time interleaved with other N-1 SAR acquisitions, resulting in the respective acquisition directions being parallel to each other and not parallel to acquisition directions of other N-1 SAR acquisitions. Radar beams in two immediately successive time instants and related to two different SAR acquisitions are contiguous along the azimuth. SAR images may be generated using all the N SAR acquisitions having an enhanced azimuth resolution.

High-resolution stripmap SAR imaging

A SAR imaging method is provided that performs N SAR acquisitions in stripmap mode of areas of the earth's surface by means of a synthetic aperture radar transported by an aerial or satellite platform and which includes a single, non-partitioned antenna and a single receiver coupled to the single, non-partitioned antenna, N being an integer greater than one. Each SAR acquisition in stripmap mode is performed using a respective squint angle with respect to the flight direction of the synthetic aperture radar and a respective elevation angle with respect to the nadir of the synthetic aperture radar. The method may further generate SAR images of areas of the respective swath observed via the SAR acquisition in stripmap mode. All SAR images have the same azimuth resolution that is equal to half the physical or equivalent length along the azimuth direction of the single, non-partitioned antenna of the synthetic aperture radar.

Multiple-swath stripmap SAR imaging

The present invention relates to a method for acquiring SAR images for interferometric processing. The method comprises acquiring, by one or more airborne SAR sensors, SAR images of one and the same area with an acquisition geometry such that to enable interferometric processing of said SAR images. The method is characterized by an acquisition geometry in which each SAR image of the area is acquired in a respective direction of acquisition that defines a respective squint angle with respect to the direction of flight, and in which the squint angles are such that to determine a mean squint angle different from zero.

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Rome, Italy

Diego Calabrese