Inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging of maneuvering target with distributed high resolution radars

The high-resolution inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of the maneuvering target with small-angle measurements is expected, which can be achieved by using the radar operating at a higher central frequency. However, because the defocus induced by the spatially variant phase error becomes significant with the resolution improvement and the central frequency increasing, the global phase correction is invalid. Moreover, due to the scattering characteristics of aspect-dependent scatterers and small-angle measurements, we can rarely obtain the rough outline of the maneuvering target. To deal with these difficulties, we propose an ISAR imaging method for the maneuvering target with distributed high resolution radars. To mitigate the spatially variant phase error, we correct phase errors in patches based on the weighted least-squares algorithm, which makes the image well-focused. Then, the ISAR imaging method with distributed radars is presented to obtain the fusion image, with the object to capture enough scatterers to represent the maneuvering target. The fusion image could provide more details. Real data have verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.