An Extended Fast Factorized Back Projection Algorithm for Missile-Borne Bistatic Forward-Looking SAR Imaging

In this paper, an extended fast factorized back projection (FFBP) algorithm is proposed to focus the missile-borne bistatic forward-looking synthetic aperture radar (BFSAR) data. It is also based on the subaperture processing technique to reduce the computational burden, but represents the subimages on the elliptical polar coordinates referenced to the tracks of both transmitter and receiver. First, the imaging geometry and signal model of the missile-borne BFSAR are established. Then, considering the special configuration of the missile-borne BFSAR, a novel elliptical polar coordinate system whose origin is determined by the positions of both transmitter and receiver is established. The subaperture processing approach based on this coordinate system is presented. Successively, based on the range error analysis, the sampling requirements of the elliptical polar subimages are derived to provide a tradeoff between the imaging quality and efficiency. Finally, the computational burden of the proposed algorithm is discussed, and the speed-up factor of the proposed algorithm with respect to the direct back projection algorithm is derived. The experimental results with simulated data prove the validity and feasibility of the proposed algorithm.