Time-Frequency Reversion-Based Spectrum Analysis Method and Its Applications in Radar Imaging

Spectrum analysis (SA) plays an important role in radar signal processing, especially in radar imaging algorithm design. Because it is usually hard to obtain the analytical expression of spectrum by the Fourier integral directly, principle of stationary phase (POSP)-based SA is applied to approximate this integral. However, POSP requires the phase of the signal to vary rapidly, which is not the case in circular synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and turntable inverse SAR (ISAR). To solve this problem, a new SA method based on time-frequency reversion (TFRSA) is proposed, which utilizes the relationship of the Fourier transform pairs and their corresponding signal phases. In addition, the connection between the imaging geometry and time-frequency relationship is also analyzed and utilized to help solve the time-frequency reversion. When the TFRSA is applied to the linear trajectory SAR, the obtained spectrum expression is the same as the result of POSP. When it is applied to ISAR, the spectrum expressions of near-field and far-field are derived and their difference is found to be position-independent. Based on this finding, an extended polar format algorithm (EPFA) for near-field ISAR imaging is proposed, which can solve the distortion and defocusing problems caused by traditional ISAR imaging algorithms. When it is applied to the circular SAR (CSAR), a new and efficient imaging method based on EPFA is proposed, which can solve the low efficiency problem of conventional BP-based CSAR imaging algorithms. The simulations and real data processing results are provided to validate the effectiveness of proposed method.