Ground Moving Target Imaging for Highly Squint SAR by Modified Minimum Entropy Algorithm and Spectrum Rotation

Abstract

Ground moving target (GMT) is displaced and defocused in conventional synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image due to the residual phase error of non-cooperative GMT motion. In this study, a GMT imaging (GMTIm) method is proposed for highly squint SAR. As the squint angle become large, the displace and defocus effect of the GMT image become severe and the geometry distortion of the GMT image cannot be ignored. The proposed method first deduced the two-dimensional (2-D) frequency domain signal of the GMT and the bulk compression function of the Range Migration Algorithm (RMA) in highly squint SAR. Then GMT ROI data are extracted and a modified minimum entropy algorithm (MMEA) is proposed to refocus the GMT image. MMEA introduces the idea of bisection into the iteration process to converge more efficiently than the previous minimum entropy method. To overcome the geometry distortion of the GMT image, an equivalent squint angle spectrum rotation method is proposed. Finally, to suppress the GMT image sidelobe, the sparse characteristic of GMT is considered and a sparse enhancement method is adopted. The proposed method can realize GMTIm in highly squint SAR where the squint angle reaches to 75 degrees. The PSNR and ISLR of point target in highly squint SAR is close to that in side-looking SAR. The simulated point target data and ship data are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.