Rockfall monitoring based on multichannel synthetic aperture radar

Rockfall influences the safety of infrastructure and transportation lines normal operation, application of SAR technology to monitor the rockfall could predict rockfall disaster. One of the most important factors in rockfall target detection is the signal-to-clutter-plus noise ratio (SCNR) after clutter suppression, which should be maximized before rockfall target detection. Through analyzing remainder rockfall target characteristic after clutter suppression, the method of removing quadratic FM component introduced by platform velocity and along track velocity of rockfall target is proposed. After removing quadratic FM component by Dechirp technology, remainder rockfall target is focused in Doppler region image and the SCNR of remainder rockfall target is maximized. So, it has a preferable result in rockfall target detection. To resolve the contradiction between calculated amount and the accuracy of along track velocity, this paper adopts the technology of gradual approach. The effectiveness of the presented method is demonstrated by both theoretic analysis and simulated data