Online Sparse Reconstruction for Scanning Radar Using Beam-Updating q-SPICE

The generalized sparse iterative covariance-based estimation (
$q$
-SPICE) algorithm was recently introduced for scanning radar applications, resulting in substantial improvements in the angular resolution and quality of the processed images. Regrettably, the computational complexity and storage cost are high and quickly increase with growing data size, limiting the applicability of the estimator. In this letter, we strive to alleviate this problem, deriving a beam-updating
$q$
-SPICE algorithm, allowing for efficiently updating of the sparse reconstruction result for each online radar measurement along the scanned beam. The resulting method is a regularized extension of the current online
$q$
-SPICE implementation, which not only offers constant computational and storage cost, independent of the data size, but also provides enhanced robustness over the current online
$q$
-SPICE. Our experimental assessment, conducted using both simulated and real data, demonstrates the advantage of the beam-updating
$q$
-SPICE method in the task of sparse reconstruction for scanning radar.