Automated two- and three-dimensional, fine-resolution radar imaging of rigid targets with arbitrary unknown motion

An automated system for the SAR/ISAR imaging of rigid bodies which are undergoing arbitrarily complicated unknown motions is being developed. This system determines, from only the radar data, all observable parameters of motion, on a pulse by pulse basis. The approach makes it possible to: (1) exploit any type of relative motion: translational, rotational, two dimensional, three dimensional, deterministic, or stochastic; no prior parametric assumptions on the functional form of the motion are required; (2) require only the radar data; no ancillary motion measurement system on either the radar platform or on the target is required; (3) automatically provide all the motion information needed to form correctly scaled images, without cross range scale ambiguities; (4) make full use of all the radar data; no signals returning from a target are discarded; and (5) require a known computation time, which is not signal dependent, as all iterative processes used have known, guaranteed convergence rates.