Welcome!

The Radar Vibrometry Group focuses its research work on extracting vibration signals from simulated and actual Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. The Radar Vibrometry Group has developed several Fractional-Fourier Transform based algorithms as well as other statistical signal processing methods to isolate the non-stationary vibration signals of vibrating objects observed during a SAR data collection (single, as well as dual-beam radar), determine the objects vibration spectrum and recover SAR image data obscured by vibration artifacts in the image. While the main thrust of the project is signal processing for radar, the project also involves supporting research in electromagnetic modeling of reflectors as well as structural modeling of vibrating objects. The projects in this group are supported by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), a leader in Synthetic Aperture Radar, and have undergone productive field testing where the Radar Vibrometry Group has constructed several vibrating objects that were imaged in collaboration with Lynx radar manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical. In addition, the group is currently considering the development of a novel pattern-recognition paradigm based upon a three-dimensional representation of the scene, comprising the two-dimensional SAR image and the instantaneous-frequency history of each pixel.


Main Sponsors

Department of Energy (NNSA), National Nuclear Security Administration:     “Algorithms and Methodologies for Detecting Vibrations using Synthetic Aperture Radar: A Fractional-Fourier Transform  Approach,”


Defense Intelligence Agency, National Consortium for Measures and Signatures Intelligence: MASINT University Research Program, “Co-registered Vibrometry and Imaging: A Combined Synthetic-Aperture Radar and Fractional-Fourier Transform Approach,”

National Consortium for Measures and Signatures Intelligence: MASINT University Research Program, “Co-registered Vibrometry and Imaging: A Combined Synthetic Aperture Radar and Fractional-Fourier Transform Approach,” Award administered by the National  Science Foundation


Additional Sponsors

Sandia National Laboratories, “Novel signal processing strategies for remote detection of vibrational signals,”

Sandia National Laboratories, “Image processing strategies for long-wavelength synthetic aperture radar,”


Special Thanks to Tom Atwood and Armin Doerry of Sandia National Laboratories for helping guide this research effort.


The success of this work owes much to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. who has made the Lynx system available for testing the methods developed in this project


This material/page is based upon work supported by the National  Science Foundation under IIS Grants No. IIS-0813747

“Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.”

Latest update: October 1st, 2012.

Paper Accepted in Conference

July 17th, 2012

The paper titled “Performance Analysis on Synthetic Aperture Radar-based Vibration Estimation in Clutter” by Wang, Santhanam, Pepin, and Hayat was accepted for the 46th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California, November 4-7, 2012.

Paper Invited to Conference

April 17th, 2012

The paper titled “Reduction of vibration-induced artifacts in Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery using the fractional Fourier transform,” by Wang, Pepin, Dunkel, Atwood, Doerry, Santhanam, Gerstle and Hayat, was accepted in the International Conference on Image Processing, ICIP’12.

Journal Paper Accepted

January 29th, 2012

The paper titled “SAR-based Vibration Estimation using the Discrete Fractional Fourier Transform” was accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

New Website

October 1st, 2012

This new website has been online since October 1st, 2012.