The ISAR range profile compensation of fast-moving target using the dechirp method

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of the fast-moving target is a very important task for many military and civilian applications such as satellite. This correspondence investigates the ISAR echo signal model of fast-moving target and analyzes its impacts on ISAR images firstly. The results show that the echo signal of each scatterer point of fast-moving target is approximately a chirp signal and the commonly used stretch process will cause one-dimensional (1-D) range profile aberration and performance deterioration of motion compensation method and ISAR two-dimensional (2-D) image blurring. Then, an effective algorithm using the dechirp method is proposed to deal with these problems above. The computer simulation experiment results have shown that the proposed algorithm can compensate the range profile aberration of fast-moving target effectively.