VHF cross-range profiling of aerial targets via passive ISAR processing

In this paper we investigate the possibility of obtaining cross-range profiles of aerial targets by applying Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) techniques against FM based passive radar data. To this purpose a suitable processing scheme is proposed that allows to successfully exploit the very long Coherent Processing Interval (CPI) required to attain a reasonable cross-range resolution. In particular a two stages approach is considered for the estimation of the target motion parameters and their compensation based on consecutive sub-CPI. The results are shown against a simulated data set using a realistic acquisition geometry. This allowed us to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach that provides the FM based passive radar with an extremely increased resolution for targets with a motion component in the cross-range direction.