ENHANCED ISAR IMAGING METHOD USING BACK-PROJECTION AND SVA ALGORITHM

We present an inverse synthetic aperture radar image enhancement technique that combines the plane-wave approximation-based back-projection (BP) algorithm and the spatially variant apodization (SVA) method. The SVA technique is applied to reduce the sidelobe levels while retaining the cross-range resolution. To demonstrate the performance of our algorithm, we compare the conventional fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based algorithm, the combined FFT and SVA method, the BP algorithm, and the proposed method (combined BP and SVA method). The cross-range resolution and peak to sidelobe ratio (PSLR) are selected as performance measures. Our algorithm has better resolution than the conventional combined FFT and SVA method, while the combined FFT and SVA method has better PSLR than our method. We validate our algorithm via a numerical simulation and measurements conducted in a compact range. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:993-997, 2015