Research on spatial-variant property of bistatic ISAR imaging plane of space target

The imaging plane of inverse synthetic aperture radar(ISAR) is the projection plane of the target. When taking an image using the range-Doppler theory, the imaging plane may have a spatial-variant property, which causes the change of scatter’s projection position and results in migration through resolution cells. In this study, we focus on the spatial-variant property of the imaging plane of a three-axis-stabilized space target. The innovative contributions are as follows. 1) The target motion model in orbit is provided based on a two-body model. 2) The instantaneous imaging plane is determined by the method of vector analysis. 3) Three Euler angles are introduced to describe the spatial-variant property of the imaging plane, and the image quality is analyzed. The simulation results confirm the analysis of the spatial-variant property. The research in this study is significant for the selection of the imaging segment, and provides the evidence for the following data processing and compensation algorithm.     

双基地角时变下的逆合成孔径雷达越分辨单元徙动校正算法

采用双基地逆合成孔径雷达距离-多普勒算法成像时,目标尺寸较大或累积转角过大,会引起越分辨单元徙动现象,影响成像质量.针对双基地角时变下逆合成孔径雷达成像的越分辨单元徙动问题,提出了一种校正算法.首先,建立了双基地逆合成孔径雷达回波模型,分析了越分辨单元徙动的产生机理,并通过广义的Keystone变换实现了越距离单元徙动的校正,同时消除了目标非匀速转动对成像的影响.然后,基于图像对比度最大准则估计了图像的等效旋转中心位置,并对距离向绝对定标,进而构造补偿相位项,完成了越多普勒单元徙动的校正.仿真实验结果表明,此方法能够有效地校正双基地角时变下的越分辨单元徙动,提高成像质量.     

High resolution inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging of three-axis-stabilized space target by exploiting orbital and sparse priors

The development of inverse synthetic aperture radar(ISAR) imaging techniques is of notable significance for monitoring, tracking and identifying space targets in orbit. Usually, a well-focused ISAR image of a space target can be obtained in a deliberately selected imaging segment in which the target moves with only uniform planar rotation. However, in some imaging segments, the nonlinear range migration through resolution cells(MTRCs) and time-varying Doppler caused by the three-dimensional rotation of the target would degrade the ISAR imaging performance, and it is troublesome to realize accurate motion compensation with conventional methods. Especially in the case of low signal-to-noise ratio(SNR),the estimation of motion parameters is more difficult. In this paper, a novel algorithm for high-resolution ISAR imaging of a space target by using its precise ephemeris and orbital motion model is proposed. The innovative contributions are as follows. 1) The change of a scatterer projection position is described with the spatial-variant angles of imaging plane calculated based on the orbital motion model of the three-axis-stabilized space target. 2) A correction method of MTRC in slant-and cross-range dimensions for arbitrarily imaging segment is proposed. 3) Coarse compensation for translational motion using the precise ephemeris and the fine compensation for residual phase errors by using sparsity-driven autofocus method are introduced to achieve a high-resolution ISAR image. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.