3D ISAR image reconstruction of a target with motion data using adaptive feature extraction

In this paper, three-dimensional (3D) inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) image reconstruction with known motion data is studied. In traditional two-dimensional (2D) ISAR imaging, a 2D point scatterer model is adequate to consider the target rotation motion with a fixed rotational axis. However, target motions with a varying rotational axis are sometimes encountered in real situations. Under such cases, the use of a 3D point scatterer model is necessary for 3D ISAR image reconstruction. An adaptive feature extraction algorithm is proposed to reconstruct the 3D image of a target with non-uniformly undersampled. radar data over the azimuth and elevation aperture. Simulation results based on actual motion data of air targets demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.