Inverse synthetic aperture radar processing using parametric time-frequency estimators Phase I

This report summarizes the work performed for the Office of the Chief of Naval Research (ONR) during the period of 1 September 1997 through 31 December 1997. The primary objective of this research was aimed at developing an alternative time-frequency approach which is recursive-in-time to be applied to the Inverse Synthethic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging problem discussed subsequently. Our short term (Phase I) goals were to: 1. Develop an ISAR stepped-frequency waveform (SFWF) radar simulator based on a point scatterer vehicular target model incorporating both translational and rotational motion; 2. Develop a parametric, recursive-in-time approach to the ISAR target imaging problem; 3. Apply the standard time-frequency short-term Fourier transform (STFT) estimator, initially to a synthesized data set; and 4. Initiate the development of the recursive algorithm. We have achieved all of these goals during the Phase I of the project and plan to complete the overall development, application and comparison of the parametric approach to other time-frequency estimators (STFT, etc.) on our synthesized vehicular data sets during the next phase of funding. It should also be noted that we developed a batch minimum variance translational motion compensation (TMC) algorithm to estimate the radial components of target motion (see Section IV). This algorithm is easily extended to recursive solution and will probably become part of the overall recursive processing approach to solve the ISAR imaging problem. Our goals for the continued effort are to: 1. Develop and extend a complex, recursive-in-time, time- frequency parameter estimator based on the recursive prediction error method (RPEM) using the underlying Gauss- Newton algorithms. 2. Apply the complex RPEM algorithm to synthesized ISAR data using the above simulator. 3. Compare the performance of the proposed algorithm to standard time-frequency estimators applied to the same data sets.