Radar coincidence imaging with phase error using Bayesian hierarchical prior modeling

Abstract. Radar coincidence imaging (RCI) is a high-resolution imaging technique without the limitation of relative motion between target and radar. In sparsity-driven RCI, the prior knowledge of imaging model requires to be known accurately. However, the phase error generally exists as a model error, which may cause inaccuracies of the model and defocus the image. The problem is formulated using Bayesian hierarchical prior modeling, and the self-calibration variational message passing (SC-VMP) algorithm is proposed to improve the performance of RCI with phase error. The algorithm determines the phase error as part of the imaging process. The scattering coefficient and phase error are iteratively estimated using VMP and Newton’s method, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can estimate the phase error accurately and improve the imaging quality significantly.