MIMO radar for supporting automated rendezvous maneuvers with non-cooperative satellites

This paper proposes an approach to support rendezvous maneuvers of space crafts and satellites with an onboard millimeter wave radar system. In conjunction with position and velocity, the rotation parameters of the target satellite need to be estimated to fulfill such operations with non-cooperative targets. The combination of ISAR processing and MIMO techniques allows to determine the orientation of the axis of rotation in three dimensions, while the micro-Doppler signature is used to estimate the rotation period.