A Novel Microwave Staring Correlated Imaging Approach Based on Single Transmitting Antenna

Microwave Staring Correlated Imaging (MSCI) is a high resolution radar imaging technique with its resolution mainly determined by the independence level of radiation fields. In conventional MSCI, an array configuration consisting of multiple transmitting antennas is commonly adopted, which results in high system complexity and implementation difficulty. To remedy these defects, a novel Single Transmitting Antenna MSCI method (STA-MSCI) is proposed in this work. By utilizing frequency-hopping waveforms and variant aperture field patterns in single transmitter scenario, a collection of feasible independent radiation fields is generated and then applied to target reconstruction. Numerical imaging experiments of the proposed method are conducted in a predefined geometric configuration. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed single transmitting antenna based method achieves superior resolution to the traditional Real Aperture Radar with a simplified system structure, and brings in a new dimension for futher designs of MSCI radiation source.