Bistatic ISAR Sparse Imaging Method for High-Speed Moving Target Based on Dechirping Processing

Abstract

Bistatic inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) can increase the probability of tracking the high-speed target and provide more angle information than monostatic ISAR. However, bistatic ISAR suffers from a serious defocusing problem, resulting from the high-speed motion. Furthermore, the inherent geometry distortion and calibration problems make bistatic ISAR (B-ISAR) imaging more complex. In response to these problems, we propose a bistatic ISAR imaging method for high-speed moving target with geometric distortion correction and calibration based on dechirping processing. At first, based on the motion decomposition idea, the B-ISAR echo model of the high-speed moving target is established. Then, by analyzing the imaging mechanism of the Range-Doppler algorithm (RDA), we eliminate the phase items influencing the imaging quality with speed compensation and Doppler compensation. After that, the analytic formula of the geometric distortion factor and calibration factor are deduced, which helps transform the geometric correction and calibration problem into a parameter estimation problem. Finally, with the sparsity of the scattering points, the required parameters are solved using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm based on the maximum a posteriori probability criterion. With the estimated parameters, a clear B-ISAR image of a high-speed moving target with geometric correction and calibration is obtained. The simulations show that the proposed method has a better resolution and simultaneously attains geometric correction and calibration of the image.