Image Registration for 3-D Interferometric-ISAR Imaging Through Joint-Channel Phase Difference Functions

To perform 3-D inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging through interferometric processing, all ISAR images should be correctly registered such that the same scatterer appears at the same position along both the range and Doppler directions. However, this condition generally does not hold in most situations because different radar view angles introduce additional angular motion errors that must be compensated. Hence, we herein propose a new ISAR registration method based on joint-channel phase difference (JC-PD) operations. From the result of the JC-PD function, JC-PD profiles are obtained, in which the locations and phases of the maximum peak contain constant and time-varying angular motions, respectively. Using our proposed method, correct ISAR registrations can be achieved in both the range and Doppler directions. In particular, compared to conventional Doppler registration methods, time-varying angular motions are more accurately compensated without the problem of cross-term phase interference. Through simulations and experiments, we verified that the proposed method yielded accurate ISAR registration results; hence, an excellent 3-D target reconstruction through interferometric ISAR imaging was demonstrated.