Patent ID: 6700527
Filing Date: 2004-03-02
Classification: G01S

Abstract:
A method of generating an image of a terrestrial region upon which electromagnetic energy from respectively different narrowband energy sources is incident comprising the steps of:(a) passively collecting electromagnetic energy emitted by said respectively different narrowband energy sources by way of at least one first energy collector; (b) passively collecting, by at least one second energy collector moving independently and arbitrarily with respect to said respectively different narrowband energy sources among a plurality of distributed energy collection locations, electromagnetic energy emitted by said electromagnetic energy sources and scattered by features of said terrestrial region of interest; (c) processing a reference signal representative of electromagnetic energy collected in step (a), in accordance with information representative of the collection geometry of said at least one first energy collector and the geolocations of said electromagnetic energy sources, so as to derive a time- and location-corrected reference signal; (d) correlating the time- and location-corrected reference signal derived in step (c) with image signals representative of electromagnetic energy collected by said at least one moving second energy collector in step (b), so as to derive amplitude and phase values of scattering components for each of said narrowband sources for plural locations of said terrestrial region as received by said at least one moving second energy collector as a function of spatial position; and (e) processing scattering components derived in step (d) for each of said respectively different narrowband sources to produce said multidimensional image of said terrestrial region of interest.