T02 — Introduction to inverse synthetic aperture radar

Summary form only given. Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) is a technique used for reconstructing radar images of targets. Modern highresolution radars implicitly offer the system requirements needed for implementing ISAR imaging. ISAR images are obtained by means of a signal processing that can be enabled both on and off-line. Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) systems are often based on the use of radar images because they provide a 2D e.m. map of the target reflectivity. Therefore, classification features that contain spatial information can be extracted and used to increase the performance of classifiers. This tutorial aims at providing an introduction to ISAR. The lecture is divided in three parts: the first part deals with principles of ISAR, the second part concerns ISAR processing and the third part focuses on advanced ISAR systems, such as bistatic, passive and multistatic ISAR systems. The ISAR system is introduced by defining the radar-target geometry and by considering simple radar concepts. The derivation of the ISAR processor is obtained by defining the signal model and by interpreting it in the Fourier domain. Differences between ISAR and SAR are also highlighted in order to better understand ISAR concepts.