Three-Dimensional Imaging Using Colocated MIMO Radar and ISAR Technique

A conventional inverse synthetic aperture radar image is a 2-D range-Doppler projection of a target and does not provide 3-D information. Three-dimensional imaging using an interferometric technique cannot separate scatterers that have been projected onto the same range-Doppler unit. Multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) radar, however, in addition to having a wide virtual aperture and a high cross-range resolution, could also obtain a target's 3-D image in one snapshot. We discuss in this paper the use of time-domain information to improve MIMO radar's imaging quality. A 3-D image alignment algorithm and a rotation vector estimation method are discussed. Simulation results show that image SNR is improved and cross-range sidelobes are mitigated.