The fractional Fourier transform and ISAR imaging

We comment on a connection between the fractional Fourier transform and inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging (ISAR). The results help illuminate older constructions due to Bernfeld (Bernfeld M 1984 Chirp Doppler radar Proc. IEEE Lett. 72 540) and Feig and Gr¨ (Feig E and Gr¨ unbaum A 1986 Tomographic methods in range-Doppler radar Inverse Problems2 185-95) and suggest a fast scheme for eliminating the polar data reformatting step in (ordinary) ISAR imaging.