MONOPULSE FORWARD-LOOKING 3D IMAGING ALGORITHM BASED ON STFT

Three-dimensional (3D) imaging of the forward-looking target is of great benefit for identifying and striking the target. However, due to the narrow Doppler bandwidth, the traditional high-resolution imaging techniques cannot be employed for the forward-looking imaging. The 3D information of forward-looking targets can be obtained by the monopulse technique, but there are also some problems, such as the angular glint. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a novel monopulse forward-looking 3D imaging algorithm based on the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT). Firstly, the STFT is utilized for each range unit of the three-channel compressed data and the results are spliced. Then the unit whose amplitude exceeds the threshold value in the sum channel is selected, and its azimuth and elevation angles are obtained by the monopulse technique. Finally, the energy projection is carried out to realize the 3D reconstruction of the target. The proposed method has the advantages of short accumulation time, low calculation, and high-quality results, and is conducive to the real-time imaging and target recognition. The simulation experiment is performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.