Spaceborne distributed aperture radar maneuvering target detection approach with space-time 2D hybrid integration technique.

• The proposed NRFRP in time dimension can accurately eliminate DFM with a onestep process of matrix multiplication, which greatly reduces the computational burden. • The introduced MSCFT in time dimension corrects RWM accurately without the Doppler ambiguity effect. Furthermore, due to the proper selection of scale factor, the DFM in space dimension can be omitted, and the search operation of the Doppler center can be avoided. • The proposed STHI algorithm can significantly improve the detection performance of maneuvering targets compared with the time dimension integration only. • The proposed algorithm can compensate for Doppler spectrum ambiguity, which improves the robustness of the algorithm effectively. Moving target detection in spaceborne distributed aperture radar (SBDAR) is a challenging task in civilian and military fields. The common issues are that the current methods suffer from the large range cell migration (RCM) and time-varying Doppler frequency modulation (DFM) problems in space-time two-dimensional (2D) domain, which is caused by distributed aperture radar detection configuration and the maneuvering characteristics of moving targets. To address these issues, a novel SBDAR moving target detection approach via space–time hybrid integration (STHI) is proposed in this paper. Compared with single or bistatic radar mode, the utilization of multiple satellites provides an improvement in moving target detection performance, together with the capabilities of localization and parameters estimation. The proposed method mainly includes the following three steps. First, the geometric and signal models of an observed maneuvering target are accurately established in a SBDAR framework, where the space-time 2D RCM and DFM are analyzed. Based on that, the second-order Keystone transform (SKT), a novel range frequency reversal process (NRFRP) and a modified scaled Fourier transform (MSCFT) are developed to correct the RCM and DFM, achieving an efficient time dimension coherent integration for maneuvering target. After that, by dividing the radar detection area, the spatial projection method is adopted to integrate the moving target energy in space dimension. Finally, the simulation results verify the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]