In the SPIE 2016 Unconventional Imaging session, the authors laid out a breakthrough new theory for active array imaging that exploits the speckle return to generate a high-resolution picture of the target. Since then, we have pursued that theory even in long-range (<1000-km) engagement scenarios and shown how we can obtain that high-resolution image of the target using only a few illuminators, or by using many illuminators. There is a trade of illuminators versus receivers, but many combinations provide the same synthetic aperture resolution. We will discuss that trade, along with the corresponding radiometric and speckle-imaging Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR) for geometries that can fit on relatively small aircraft, such as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Furthermore, we have simulated the performance of the technique, and we have created a laboratory version of the approach that is able to obtain high-resolution speckle imagery. The principal results presented in this paper are the Signal to Noise Ratios (SNR) for both the radiometric and the speckle imaging portions of the problem, and the simulated results obtained for representative arrays.
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