Appeal No. 2006-2067
Application 10/437,836
from radar scatterers associated with the terrain along multiple lanes using first and second
channels that overlap to form a cross-shaped antenna pattern. Claim 6 requires an
interferometric synthetic aperture radar system which overlaps antenna patterns to form a
cross-shaped footprint enabling simultaneous terrain elevation measurement. Claim 17
requires a multi-mode altimeter system having a multi-channel antenna operative to
generate an overlapping, cross-shaped pattern defining a first channel and a second
channel.
Madsen discloses an interferometric synthetic aperture radar system for elevation
having two antennas (110, 120) that each detect pulse signals including information in the
form of phase and amplitude of an entire area (130) having random objects (132) therein
(col. 4, lines 60-63). Residual delay estimation can be used to determine the absolute
phase, which is a phase value that is directly proportional to the slant range difference from
a target to the two antennas, without using known ground references (col. 11, lines 6-9 and
55-58). The residual delay estimation technique uses the relative phase values of all data
points within a data patch from the antenna’s data channels to transform a complex image
from one channel to be identical to an image from the other channel (col. 9, lines 50-51; col.
11, lines 59-62). “The resulting phase shift is proportional to twice the time delay of the
uncompensated range difference between the two images” (col. 11, lines 62-65).
Marino discloses a multibeam radar velocity sensor that performs both Doppler shift
and time-correlation measurements (col. 1, lines 6-8). To determine the velocity of an
aircraft, a Doppler shift measurement is made of return signals from four symmetrical
position beams (1-4; figure 1) that are transmitted and received serially over four distinct
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Last modified: November 3, 2007