Three-dimensional interferometric inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging of maneuvering target based on the joint cross modified Wigner-Ville distribution

Abstract. Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) can achieve high-resolution two-dimensional images of maneuvering targets. However, due to the indeterminate relative motion between radar and target, ISAR imaging does not provide the three-dimensional (3-D) position information of a target and suffers from great difficulty in target recognition. To tackle this issue, a 3-D interferometric ISAR (InISAR) imaging algorithm based on the joint cross modified Wigner-Ville distribution (MWVD) is presented to form 3-D images of maneuvering targets. First, we form two orthogonal interferometric baselines with three receiving antennas to establish an InISAR imaging system. Second, after the uniform range alignment and phase adjustment, the joint cross MWVD is used for all range cell of each antenna pair to generate the separation of the scatterer as well as preserve the phase that contains position information of the scatterer. At last, the 3-D images of the target can be directly reconstructed from the distribution. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposal.