Curvilinear Flight Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR): Analysis, Methods, and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The utilization of range and Doppler information to produce synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is a technique used in diverse fields, including air-to-ground imaging of objects, terrain, and oceans. The conventional SAR systems, which are mounted on aircrafts or satellites at certain heights, have been extensively investigated in the past several decades and found to be particularly useful under poor weather or illumination conditions. In the literature, the velocity is usually assumed as a constant value with a linear flight path. However, in practical environments, variations from this ideal model are inevitable. Small deviations, such as in airborne or spaceborne SAR, are mainly caused by atmospheric turbulence or rotation of the earth. Larger variations from the ideal path challenge the traditional design and processing technology, such as those experienced by SAR systems on drones, missiles, helicopters, or hypersonic vehicles engaging in high-acceleration “pop-up” maneuvers to perform post-earthquake change detection and monitoring of curvilinear areas of interest (corridor mapping), i.e., rivers, nearby (potential) flooding areas, and traffic routes. Nevertheless, the above highlight the need to devise new observation configurations based on multifrequency, multiantenna, or even multiplatform SAR systems.

This Special Issue is devoted to highlighting the most advanced research studies on curvilinear flight SAR technologies, methodologies, and applications. Papers dealing with fundamental theoretical analyses as well as those demonstrating their application in real-world and emerging problems are welcomed. This journal publishes original papers and occasionally invited review articles in all areas related to curvilinear flight SAR, including, but not limited to, the following suggested topics:

• New SAR systems mounted on drones, CubeSats, missiles, helicopters, hypersonic vehicles, and automobile with curvilinear trajectories;
• Monostatic and bistatic SAR algorithms with curvilinear flight paths;
• Curvilinear flight SAR ground moving target indication (GMTI);
• Curvilinear flight interferometric SAR (InSAR) and tomographic SAR (TomoSAR);
• Curvilinear flight SAR three-dimensional (3-D) imaging;
• Curvilinear flight SAR image target recognition;
• Multichannel, multifrequency, and multiantenna SAR;
• Digital beam-forming (DBF) SAR imaging approaches;
• Real-time SAR processing system designs and algorithms

Prof. Dr. Hing Cheung So
Prof. Dr. Shiyang Tang
Prof. Dr. Alfonso Farina
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.