Effect of 6-DOF Oscillation of Ship Target on SAR Imaging

Abstract

Ship targets are high-value military and civilian targets with broad application prospects. However, the precise focusing of ships is still a difficult issue because of their complicated six-degree-of-freedom motions on the sea surface. This paper focused on investigating the effect of ship six-degree-of-freedom oscillation on Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging. Firstly, based on the six-degree-of-freedom motions, the accurate range models for ship linear oscillation and angular oscillation were built, and the superiority was verified by comparing them with the models described in published literature. Secondly, we used the Taylor formula and Bessel function to expand the phase error introduced by ship oscillation, then their effects on imaging were further analyzed. Finally, based on the measured ship attitude data, we generated the semi-physical echoes of the oscillatory ship to validate the analysis throughout this article. Based on the proposed range model, we also made some tentative on the phase compensation method by fitting ship attitude angles with multiple sinusoidal functions.