Bistatic-ISAR Distortion Correction and Range and Cross-Range Scaling

The bistatic configuration used for inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging has attracted much attention because of its potential to overcome the certain limitations of monostatic ISAR imaging. However, range and cross-range scaling and bistatic distortion correction are essential for the efficient use of a bistatic ISAR (Bi-ISAR) image in their applications. In this paper, we introduce a novel range and cross-range scaling technique and bistatic distortion correction method for the restoration of a sheared (Bi-ISAR) image. The proposed method is composed of five stages: 1) extraction of the prominent scatterer using the range-bin selection method; 2) determination of the coefficients of the phase-history data in the selected range bin; 3) estimation of rotation center of the target using the optimization procedures via the particle swarm optimization algorithm; 4) range and cross-range scaling of (Bi-ISAR) image; and 5) restoration of the bistatic distortion that caused the sheared (Bi-ISAR) image. Finally, the proposed method can generate a well-scaled and restored (Bi-ISAR) image. An outstanding advantage of this method is that it requires no prior information about the bistatic configuration. Several examples are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.