AF-AMPNet: A Deep Learning Approach for Sparse Aperture ISAR Imaging and Autofocusing

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging and autofocusing are challenging under sparse aperture (SA) conditions. Traditional imaging or autofocusing methods fail to obtain satisfying results due to the nonuniform and incomplete data caused by SA. To address this problem, a novel compressive sensing (CS)-based imaging and autofocusing framework is proposed to obtain high cross-range resolution for SA ISAR. To achieve well-focused imaging results of better performance and higher efficiency simultaneously, we merge the phase error estimation into the CS framework, then iteratively solve the compound CS problem in matrix form with approximate message-passing (AMP), dubbed as AF-AMP. Moreover, a deep learning approach is also proposed by mapping AF-AMP into a deep network, dubbed as AF-AMPNet, with extensive modifications to further improve the efficiency. The adaptively and layer-wisely optimal parameters learned by the training process are also promising to enhance the performance and robustness against noise. Besides, the loss function for training is subjoined with regularized l₁ and l₂ constraints to ensure the sparsity and quality of imaging results. Furthermore, the proposed AF-AMP and corresponding network-based AF-AMPNet are verified by simulated and measured experiments, both of which show superior performance, robustness, and higher efficiency than other state-of-the-art methods. AF-AMPNet can achieve the best performance in much less computational time.