Radar Imaging for Moving Targets

Interest in radar imaging has been growing for the past decades because of its long range sensing capabilities. It’s continued utility and applications in wide-ranging areas is fundamentally dependant on the ability to produce high-quality, artifact-free imagery. The use of radar to identify and image moving targets remains of great interest for both commercial and military usage. However, when imaging moving targets, there will be issues of incorrect positioning or streaking as the unknown target velocity gives rise to image artifacts. Many techniques have been developed to handle moving objects, however, these techniques make use of the so-called start-stop approximation in which target motion is assumed to be momentarily stationary, while it is being interrogated by a radar pulse.
A new linearized imaging theory that combines spatial, temporal and spectral aspects of scattered waves has been developed. This thesis considers the performance of these techniques and compared to existing imaging schemes. It is shown that the new imaging scheme provides better localization and is translation invariant in phasespace. It is also shown that the imaging scheme is dependent on the aperture geometry.