Principles and algorithms for inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging of manoeuvring targets

Abstract

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of a non-cooperative manoeuvring target is a challenging task due to its time-varying orientation and rotation velocity which denies accurate measurement. This paper investigates the general principles of ISAR imaging of manoeuvring targets, and proposes an algorithm for application in situations when the manoeuvrability is not too serious and the Doppler variation of sub-echoes from scatterers can be approximated as a first order polynomial. The imaging results using real data show the effectiveness of the new method.