Sparse Nonuniform Frequency Sampling for Fast SFCW Radar Imaging

Stepped frequency continuous wave (SFCW) radar achieves wide bandwidth by synthesizing series of monochromatic pulses in a consecutive manner. Uniform frequency sampling is often performed with a constant frequency step, which in turn limits the maximum unambiguous range achievable by the radar to reliably distinguish targets. Thus, a small frequency step must be selected when clutters exist at long distances even though the target of interests is located at much closer distances. This is costly since a large number of frequencies must be synthesized, which leads to slow acquisition speed. In this paper, a sparse nonuniform frequency sampling method is proposed to effectively reduce the number of frequencies while suppressing aliasing effects from clutters. The Poisson Sum Formula is utilized to derive a deterministic formula for choosing a discrete set of frequencies within a specified frequency band. A corresponding frequency weighting formula is added in order to maintain the same target impulse response in time-domain as the one achieved by dense uniform frequency sampling. Numerical and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the improved performances of the proposed sparse sampling method for SFCW radar imaging.