Joint inference of dominant scatterer locations and motion parameters of an extended target in high range-resolution radar

A target of interest measured by a high range resolution radar may be modelled by multiple dominant points of reflections referred to as dominant scatterers. In this study a non-linear state space setting is used to model the states and measurements of a target moving in two dimensions. A resample-move particle filter (PF) with simulated annealing is successfully used to jointly infer the locations of the dominant scatterers and the motion parameters of the target. The location estimates of scatterers using the PF method are compared with those obtained using standard range-Doppler inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging when using the same radar returns for both cases. The PF infers the location of scatterers more accurately than ISAR processing, and the processing can be performed online as opposed to ISAR processing, which requires batching. It is relatively straightforward to extend the method to perform localisation and tracking of scatterers in three dimensions, whereas such an extension is challenging in ISAR processing. However, several challenges need be addressed to make this algorithm suitable for practical implementation and these challenges are discussed. This method may be used to obtain very accurate estimates of target state, which may in turn be used for accurate ISAR motion compensation.