Foliage-penetrating (FOPEN) radar is a relatively modern capability for surveillance and earth resource monitoring. It had been well known for several decades that radar could propagate efficiently through forests at frequencies below 1 GHz. But it was not until the 1960s that the propagation loss and clutter scattering models were effectively developed to provide reasonable expectations that fixed and moving objects could be detected. More importantly, the technology for effective waveform design and signal processing was not available until the advent of coherent sources and high-speed digital processing.

Chapter Contents:

• 14.1 Introduction
• 14.2 History of Battlefield Surveillance
• 14.3 Foliage-Penetrating SAR Collection Systems
• 14.4 FOPEN Clutter Characteristics
• 14.5 Image Formation
• 14.6 Radio Frequency Interference
• 14.7 Target Detection and Characterization
• 14.8 Summary
• 14.9 References
• 14.10 Further Reading

Inspec keywords: electromagnetic wave scattering; electromagnetic wave propagation; radar detection; ultra wideband radar; object detection; ground penetrating radar; synthetic aperture radar; radar imaging; radar clutter; search radar; vegetation; monitoring

Other keywords: earth resource monitoring; synthetic aperture radar; surveillance monitoring; FOPEN; radar propagation loss; signal processing; SAR; moving object detection; UWB radar; radar imaging; waveform design; clutter scattering model; high-speed digital processing; foliage-penetrating radar; forest

Subjects: Electromagnetic wave propagation; Optical, image and video signal processing; Geophysical techniques and equipment; Radar equipment, systems and applications