An efficient 3-D near-field ISAR algorithm

This paper presents a new three-dimensional (3-D) near-field inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging technique. A 3-D ISAR image can be obtained by processing coherently the backscattered fields as a function of the frequency and two rotation angles about axes which are mutually orthogonal. Most of the existing ISAR algorithms are based on the Fourier transform and as such can tolerate only small amounts of wavefront curvature. Wavefront curvature must be taken into account when imaging an object in the near-field. Near-field ISAR imaging of large objects using a direct Fourier inversion may result in images which are increasingly unfocused at points which are more distant from the center of rotation. An algorithm based on an azimuth convolution between a near-field focusing function and the frequency domain backscattered fields is discussed. This convolution is efficiently implemented by using fast Fourier transform (FFT) techniques. Furthermore, in order to further alleviate the computational load of the algorithm, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the focusing function is evaluated by means of the stationary phase method. Experimental results show that this technique is precise and virtually impulse invariant.