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Bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) has received more and more attention because of its forward-looking imaging capability and configuration flexibility. For BiSAR moving target imaging (MTIm), its noncooperative motion leads to unknown range cell migration (RCM) and additional phase modulation. Consequently, MTIm in BiSAR faces two main challenges: 1) the unknown RCM correction and Doppler parameter estimation are tightly coupled and 2) the Doppler parameters of the extended moving target’s different scattering points are different, i.e., the Doppler parameters are spatially variant. To cope with these problems, an optimal polar format refocusing method for bistatic SAR MTIm is proposed. First, the main part of tight coupling and spatial variation effects caused by the BiSAR platforms is eliminated, while the moving target is 2-D defocused and shifted. Then, we analyze the characteristics of 2-D defocused and shifted of the moving target in BiSAR and give the analytical expressions. Basis this, a new bistatic polar format transformation is introduced, in which the degree of freedom of defocusing result is reduced from 2-D to only 1-D. After that, the parameter estimation and refocusing issues are transformed into a constrained optimization problem (COP), and differential evolution (DE) is applied to solve the COP and obtain the refocusing results. Finally, considering the spatial variation of the extended moving target, compensation processing is performed to relocate each scattering point. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic remote sensing with multibeam echo-sounder systems (MBESs) has been extensively used for coastal and ocean survey works. The imperfect integration of multibeam echo sounder and motion sensor can introduce integration errors, which manifest as high-frequency wobbles in swaths and hinder the accurate expression of high-resolution seabed topographic maps. To address this issue, a precise method is developed to calibrate these integration errors based on a simplified georeferenced model. First, an equivalent attitude coordinate (EAC) system is defined to represent mutual transformation between equivalent attitudes and the beam launch vector; then, with the help of equivalent attitudes, a simplified footprint georeferenced model is deduced that considers the effect of the parameterized integration errors (including time delay, motion scale, yaw misalignment, and lever arm errors); finally, in a selected flat region, integration errors are inverted by regressing the bathymetric data to the corresponding fitted plane via the differential evolution (DE) algorithm. The results indicate that the proposed method can effectively eliminate wobbles in multibeam bathymetries caused by single or multiple integration errors in both shallow- and deep-water areas. By comparing the data before and after calibration with the in situ measurements, the accuracy of the calibrated shallow- and deep-water data is controlled within approximately 0.15% and 0.06% of the water depth, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In geosynchronous spaceborne–airborne bistatic synthetic aperture radar (GEO-BiSAR) system, the airborne platform achieves high-resolution imaging by passively receiving the signal from the interested scenario. In this paper, the Doppler characteristics of GEO-BiSAR and the individual contribution of the transmitter and the receiver are first analyzed. The airborne receiver is found to be the dominant contributor for the total Doppler bandwidth, which will lead to Doppler spectrum aliasing regarding the low pulse repetition frequency (PRF) adopted by the GEO-SAR. In order to suppress the Doppler ambiguity without adjusting the PRF of GEO-SAR, azimuth multichannel receiving technique is introduced to the airborne receiver. The multichannel transfer function is derived based on the method of series reversion and the spectrum reconstruction algorithm is then modified for multichannel GEO-BiSAR. Moreover, the reconstruction performance is closely related to the corresponding spacing between each channel (i.e., channel configuration). Therefore, the channel configuration design for GEO-BiSAR aims at optimizing the azimuth ambiguity-to-signal ratio with a satisfactory level of signal-to-noise ratio scaling factor by adjusting the channel configuration. The channel configuration design is modeled as a constrained single objective optimization problem (CSOP). Then, a channel configuration design method based on differential evolution and feasibility rule is proposed to solve the CSOP and obtain the channel configuration for the receiver with the optimal reconstruction performance. Finally, simulations results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and characteristics of channel configuration are analyzed in detail, which can be a practical guide for the implementation of multichannel GEO-BiSAR systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, images of ground moving targets (GMTs) are smeared, distorted, and shifted. Current GMT imaging methods are mostly based on range-Doppler algorithms, which have two main drawbacks: 1) coupling between range cell migration correction (RCMC) and Doppler parameter estimation and 2) cross terms degrade the performance of the nonlinear estimation methods. In this paper, an optimal 2-D spectrum matching method for SAR GMT imaging is proposed. The main innovation or advantage of this method is that the GMT imaging problem is transformed into a constrained optimization problem, and differential evolution is applied to guarantee a high-processing efficiency. As they are associated with the Doppler centroid variation compensation and range shift compensation processing, all GMT point scatterers can be well focused and well located. Compared with the current methods, the improvements exhibited by this method include three main benefits: 1) RCMC and Doppler parameter estimation can be simultaneously accomplished; 2) both along- and cross-track GMT velocities can be simultaneously estimated; and 3) this method can be applied to both monostatic and bistatic SARs. Numerical simulations and experimental data processing have verified the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite as the transmitter, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can passively receive the echo within the illuminated ground area and achieve 2-D imaging of the interested target. This SAR system, known as GEO-UAV bistatic SAR, is capable of autonomously accomplishing the bistatic SAR mission in rough terrain environments by prespecifying a path for the UAV receiver. In this paper, the GEO-UAV bistatic SAR system is first investigated. The practical advantages and spatial resolution are then analyzed in detail. The spatial resolution of GEO-UAV bistatic SAR is dependent on the observation geometry, which is determined by the UAV path. Therefore, the path planning for GEO-UAV bistatic SAR aims at identifying a set of optimal paths for the UAV receiver to travel through a 3-D terrain environment that simultaneously guarantees the safety of the UAV and achieves SAR imaging with optimized performance during the flight. The path planning is modeled as a constrained multiobjective optimization problem (MOP), which accurately represents the two main aspects for the path planning problem, i.e., UAV navigation and bistatic SAR imaging. Then, a path planning method based on a constrained-adaptive-multiobjective-differential-evolution algorithm is proposed to solve the MOP and generate multiple feasible paths for the UAV receiver with different tradeoffs between navigation for UAV and bistatic SAR imaging performance. The GEO-UAV bistatic SAR mission designer can choose a path from the solution set according to the application requirements, which makes the method more pragmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Seismic inversion problems often involve nonlinear relationships between data and model and usually have many local minima. Linearized inversion methods have been widely used to solve such problems. However, these kinds of methods often strongly depend on the initial model and are easily trapped in a local minimum. Global optimization methods, on the other hand, do not require a very good initial model and can approach a global minimum. However, global optimization methods are exhaustive search techniques that can be very time consuming. When the model dimension or the search space becomes large, these methods can be very slow to converge. In this paper, we propose a new global optimization algorithm by incorporating a new multimutation scheme into a differential evolution algorithm. Because mutation operation with the new multimutation scheme can generate better mutant vectors, the new global optimization algorithm has a very good ability of exploring the search space and can converge very fast. We apply the proposed algorithm to both synthetic and field data to test its performance. The results have clearly indicated that the new global optimization algorithm provides faster convergence and yields better results compared with the conventional global optimization methods in seismic inversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of classifying an image into different homogeneous regions is viewed as the task of clustering the pixels in the intensity space. In particular, satellite images contain landcover types, some of which cover significantly large areas while some (e.g., bridges and roads) occupy relatively much smaller regions. Automatically detecting regions or clusters of such widely varying sizes is a challenging task. In this paper, a new real-coded modified differential evolution based automatic fuzzy clustering algorithm is proposed which automatically evolves the number of clusters as well as the proper partitioning from a data set. Here, the assignment of points to different clusters is done based on a Xie–Beni index where the Euclidean distance is taken into consideration. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is first demonstrated for two numeric remote sensing data described in terms of feature vectors and then in identifying different landcover regions in remote sensing imagery. The superiority of the new method is demonstrated by comparing it with other existing techniques like automatic clustering using improved differential evolution, classical differential evolution based automatic fuzzy clustering, variable length genetic algorithm based fuzzy clustering, and well known fuzzy C-means algorithm both qualitatively and quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shape reconstruction of a perfectly conducting 2-D scatterer by inverting transverse magnetic scattered field measurements is investigated. The reconstruction is based on evolutionary algorithms that minimize the discrepancy between measured and estimated scattered field data. A closed cubic B-spline expansion is adopted to represent the scatterer contour. Two algorithms have been examined the differential-evolution (DE) algorithm and the particle swarm optimization (PSO). Numerical results indicate that the DE algorithm outperforms the PSO in terms of reconstruction accuracy and convergence speed. Both techniques have been tested in the case of simulated measurements contaminated by additive white Gaussian noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]