The phase statistics of a multichannel radar interferometer

The analysis in this paper is concerned with the problem of determining the phase statistics of the output of a multichannel coherent radar interferometer. The 2N channels of the radar consist of the outputs from N pairs of antennae. Each antenna receives a random electromagnetic wave field which has circular normal first-order statistics with an arbitrary coherence function. Each antenna in each pair receives a wave at a different time, the time difference Δt between each antenna in each pair being the same for all pairs. The signals received by each pair are independent. The signals from each pair are combined to give G(t, Δt)=Σ_k=1^N S_k(t) S_k*(t+Δt) where, for example, the signals from each antenna in the kth pair are S_k(t) and S_k(t+Δt).

The probability density function of the modulus and phase of G(t, Δt) is worked out. The joint density is shown to be a type of generalized K distribution, and the phase distribution is shown to be a hypergeometric function. The results show that it is possible to measure the phase of the coherence function of an electromagnetic wave field scattered from a randomly moving extended object (such as the ocean surface) using such a multichannel radar. This phase is related to asymmetry of the Doppler power spectrum. Furthermore, if this asymmetry is a result of surface currents on the ocean interacting with the surface waves which cause the electromagnetic scattering, then the surface currents may be measured in some sense.