Sparse-aperture ISAR imaging of maneuvering targets with sparse representation

Modern multifunctional radars usually acquire limited and discontinuous wideband pulses of a target, which form sparse aperture (SA) observations. Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging by exploiting these SA data is essential for multifunctional radars. Herein, we study the full-aperture (FA) reconstruction from SA measurements for SA-ISAR imaging of maneuvering targets. The FA reconstruction is achieved via sparse representation under a redundant chirp-Fourier dictionary. ISAR images of the maneuvering target are obtained by conventional adaptive joint time-frequency imaging approaches with the FA data. Both simulated and real data sets are used to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed methods.