Advanced Research into Imaging of Moving Targets

Radar imaging is an area of tremendous interest as radar-based systems are perhaps the only all-weather, long range remote sensing systems. However, radar's continued utility and application in wide-ranging areas is fundamentally dependent on the ability to produce high-quality, artifact-free imagery. To date, the use of radar to identify and image moving objects remains of great interest. It is well known that motion in the scene gives rise to mispositioning or streaking when target motion is not properly addressed. Many techniques have been developed to handle moving objects, but these techniques typically make use of the start-stop approximation, in which a target in motion is assumed to be momentarily stationary while it is being interrogated by a radar pulse. A new linearized imaging theory that combines the spatial, temporal and spectral aspects of scattered waves has been developed. This thesis studies the performance of this new imaging scheme. It also shows that the behavior of the imaging system is dependent on the aperture geometry and choice of radar waveforms transmitted.
The original document contains color images.