High forward-looking squint image processing for air-to-air missile-borne SAR

The feasibility of millimeter wave (MMW) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) onboard the air-to-air missile (AAM) was theoretically investigated in this paper, with the intent of improving the accuracy of guidance and control for AAM. The burst mode was proposed as an optimum operation mode for the air-to-air missile-borne SAR system, considering the resolution requirements, the computational loads as well as the real-time processing efficiency. The ECS algorithm with the range cubic phase error correction was applied to process the high forward-looking squint data, basing on the equivalent slant-range model deduced from the simplification of missile-to-target geometry model. Formulas for geometric correction was presented to remove the serious geometry distortion in the high squint cases, in order to provide high accurate radar images for automatic target recognition (ATR) in the consequent processing. The computer simulation results of high forward-looking squint angle of 14.83 degrees were presented, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the image processing method.