Novel transform for ultra wide-band radar imaging with circular scanning antennas

Short-range imaging technology using ultra wideband radar is increasingly seen as an essential modality in a variety of applications. Of those, security-related systems require fast computation and real-time operation. Many conventional radar imaging methods trade-off computational speed and imaging quality. The revised range point migration method is known to be both fast and accurate, resolving the issues associated with trade-off. However, this method can be applied only to an antenna scanning along a straight line or in a plane. For various applications it is more practical to assume a circular scanning trajectory, a circular antenna array, or a rotating target. For that development, we derive a new transform in polar coordinates for ultra wide-band radar imaging and create a corresponding fast imaging algorithm that processes received signals into target shapes. The performance of this imaging algorithm is demonstrated in an application to measurement data. The fast and accurate imaging capability is established by the experimental results.