ISAR imaging of target with complex motion based on novel approach for the parameters estimation of multi-component cubic phase signal

Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of target with complex motion is very important in the radar signal processing domain. In this case, the received signal can be characterized as multi-component cubic phase signal (CPS), and the high quality instantaneous ISAR images can be obtained by the parameters estimation approach. The match Fourier transform (MFT) has been proposed for the parameters estimation of linear frequency modulated (LFM) signal, and it has been used successfully in the field of ISAR imaging. In this paper, the third-order match Fourier transform (TMFT) is proposed as an extension of the traditional MFT for the parameters estimation of cubic phase signal, and the asymptotic statistical performance is analyzed theoretically with the derivation of asymptotic statistical results for the estimated parameters. Finally, the TMFT algorithm is used as a tool for the improvement of inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) images quality of target with complex motion, and the results of simulated and real data validate the effectiveness of the TMFT algorithm.