New scaling function processing approach for monostatic terrain imaging radar

To increase the mobility of an unmanned ground vehicle, this study describes new approach to detect targets in front of mono-static terrain imaging radar (TIR), which is a prototypical ground-based forward looking radar. Since the TIR employs a mono-static configuration and a real aperture antenna array, the conventional back-projection method is very useful in spite of its poor processing time. However, it is difficult to employ another method because the TIR is an ultra-wide-band type of radar and employs a dechirp-on-receive process. To overcome these difficulties, a new approach based on scaling function processing is proposed in this study. This scaling function is based on a spectral analysis approach and the proposed method conducts range cell migration compensation, secondary range compression and azimuth compression using this scaling function. In this study, the complete derivation of the proposed method is presented. A very useful formulation for a dechirped mono-static radar signal in the range Doppler domain is also proposed, in which the signal is expressed by the scaling function. The results of simulations and field tests are demonstrated to show the performance and validity of the proposed method.