3-D Reconstruction of Ship Target Based on SAR Images Sequence and Scatterer Tracking Technique

Single-channel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can be applied to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of maritime targets with the advantages of concise hardware design and lower data rate. Nevertheless, two problems should be solved to enable it, which are 1) two-dimensional (2-D) radar image focusing and 2) scatterer tracking. In this paper, an integral 3-D reconstruction algorithm is proposed for solving these problems. Firstly, the radar image is refocused by using the hybrid SAR and inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging technique. Secondly, a novel brightest scatterers (BSs) extraction method is proposed combined with a clustering algorithm, which is effective and easy to be implemented. Thirdly, a fast and robust scatterer tracking algorithm (STA) is presented to obtain the complete scatterer trajectories, and to effectively enable the factorization method. Moreover, the proposed STA is applicable also in the presence of numerous scatterers and of scatterer scintillation. Afterward, the factorization method is employed to reconstruct the 3-D structure of the ship target. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is shown with the results of simulated and real measured data.