High Precision Cross-Range Scaling and 3D Geometry Reconstruction of ISAR Targets Based on Geometrical Analysis

Cross-range scaling of sequential inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) images is a vital problem for the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of spatial targets. Specifically, since the angular velocity of spatial targets cannot be accurately estimated due to their non-cooperative nature, the obtained cross-range coordinates of the scattering points often have non-negligible errors. The errors may result in a serious distortion of the reconstructed geometry of the targets, which makes consequent target recognition and classification unreliable. To tackle this problem, via geometrical analysis, the relationship between the cross-range projection vector and the range projection vector is revealed for the first time, based on which a novel algorithm is proposed to iteratively scale the cross-range coordinates with no need for estimating the angular velocity of the spatial targets. Experimental simulations show that the proposed algorithm not only provides a higher accuracy of 3D reconstruction, but also has a lower computational complexity compared with conventional algorithm.