Application of an improved DPCA algorithm in rock-fall monitoring based on synthetic aperture radar

Rockfalls influence the safety of the surrounding infrastructure and the normal operation of transportation lines. The application of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology is a new method of rock-fall monitoring and disaster prediction. This paper proposes a new method of dynamic monitoring and parameter estimation for rockfalls based on a multichannel airborne SAR system. First, the signal model of the multichannel airborne SAR system is derived. Then, to improve performance, the traditional displaced phase centre antenna (DPCA) method is extended to three or more receiver channels. This method can be effectively applied for rock-fall target detection, as well as to precisely estimate rock-fall target parameters and resolve the ambiguity issues associated with the estimation of rock-fall target parameters. Finally, simulation results are used to validate the proposed approach.