A new fast method for the reconstruction of 2-D microwave images of rotating objects

In this paper, the problem of microwave imaging of rotating objects is appr oached from a digital signal processing point of view, Attention is focused on the reconstruction of the two-dimensional (2-D) image of an object obta ined by processing complex samples of the continuous wave (CW) signal retur n received for different object aspect angles covering a 2 pi total variati on, The effects of a polar sampling of the Fourier transform (FT) of the ta rget reflectivity function on the impulse response of the imaging system ar e analyzed, A criterion for the choice of the angular sampling interval in order to control the image blurring is given, Finally, a new and fast digital signal processing method for image reconstr uction is proposed. This method reconstructs high resolution images of rota ting targets illuminated by a CW electromagnetic signal or by a large bandw idth transmitted signal, This algorithm is suitable for processing wideband received signal of targets observed for a large variation of the viewing a ngle, so it is very attractive for the reconstruction of very high spatial resolution target images in SAR/ISAR systems, To show the performance of the method we finally present and discuss the re sults obtained by applying the proposed technique on simulated and experime ntal data.