PhD Studentship - Distributed Radar Imaging from Airborne Platforms

There is growing UK and international interest in networked sensing and autonomous collaborative platforms, where multiple airborne sensors co‑operate to collect and exploit data. In contrast to single‑platform radar systems, distributed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) architectures offer increased flexibility and resilience, more rapid environmental mapping, improved spatial coverage and enhanced information extraction through spatial diversity.

Despite this potential, distributed SAR introduces significant challenges at the systems level. These include time and phase synchronization under stringent size, weight, power and cost constraints, accurate relative positioning and motion knowledge across platforms, coordinated data acquisition strategies, and the development of SAR image formation algorithms suitable for multi‑static and distributed geometries. Understanding the performance limits of such systems, including sensitivity to synchronization errors, geometry, transm...