Distance and angular resolutions improvement for a ground-based radar imager

PELICAN is a ground-based radar imager developed for outdoor perception in the domain of mobile robotics and environmental monitoring. In order to obtain radar images with higher spatial resolution, the basic FFT tool for spectral analysis has been replaced and completed: (i) high resolution spectrum analysis with ESPRIT parametric method for distance resolution; (ii) Richardson-Lucy deconvolution to take into account the convolution introduced by the antenna beam width and to improve the angular resolution. Results obtained with simulated data and real data provided by the PELICAN radar are presented and discussed.