Investigation of 3-D RCS Image formation of ships using ISAR

Abstract

Conventional Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) utilises the rotational motion of a target such as a ship or an aircraft to obtain a 2-D image of the target’s radar cross section (RCS) profile from a coherent radar system. This concept can be extended to obtain a 3-D RCS profile if the target's translational and rotational motion has the required attributes and is known with sufficient accuracy. This paper is a preliminary investigation to see whether 3-D ISAR images can be generated with a single antenna, using an approach that is different from inter-ferometric ISAR. Simulation results have verified that 3-D ISAR images can be obtained under certain circum-stances. A major problem experienced with ship ISAR data is multipath reflection off the sea surface. Simula-tions have been performed, which illustrate the degrading effect of specular multipath on the final 3-D image.