An ISAR Imaging Method for Search Radar Involving Nonuniform Angle Samples

Abstract

This paper proposes a two-dimensional (2-D) inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging method with nonuniformly obtained angle samples. A one-dimensional (1-D) radar image, a range profile, is obtained using frequency samples within a given bandwidth. 2-D ISAR images are then obtained by acquiring the Doppler spectrum using range profiles obtained from multiple observation angles having a constant interval. However, when ISAR images are obtained by applying the range Doppler imaging method for a target scattered signal with nonuniform angle samples, a clear image cannot be obtained. In this paper, we propose a method to generate a covariance matrix from a nonuniform angle sample and obtain an ISAR image based on the multiple signal characterization (MUSIC) technique. The proposed method can be applied to the target scattering signal using a search radar, which observes target with nonuniform aspect angles. We present a scattering signal model of a target for the search radar and provide ISAR images obtained by applying the proposed method to simulated and measured data, respectively. Results reveal that the proposed method improves image quality and reduces computation time compared to the conventional method.