3D ISAR for an Along-Track Airborne Radar

In an airborne maritime radar, inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) is used to image and classify non-cooperative targets. In this article, we investigate a 3D-ISAR as an alternative representation that can potentially improve the final target classification by automatically extracting key features from the radar data, such as the length, width, and height of a target. The technique works by estimating the target scatterers' positions using measurements from multiple ISAR images. This has previously been achieved using a single receive channel that exploits the temporal motion of the target or with a multichannel dual-baseline interferometric system that uses the phase differences in both the along- and across-track directions. In this article, we combine aspects of these two techniques using a single along-track baseline suitable for airborne maritime radar systems.