Ground maneuvering target detection based on discrete polynomial-phase transform and Lv's distribution

In a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, prolonging the integration time can improve the detection performance of the ground moving target. However, the complex motions of the target will induce severe range migration and Doppler frequency migration (DFM), which cause target energy defocused and deteriorate the imaging quality. In order to deal with the problem, a novel ground moving target focusing method is proposed. In this paper, the discrete polynomial-phase transform (DPT) is performed to reduce the phase order of the range compressed signal. Then, the residual range walk is removed by the constructed compensation function. Lastly, Lv's distribution (LVD) is used to motion parameter estimation and DFM correction. The proposed method is capable of focusing the targets both near and apart from the scene center and is computationally efficient. Several simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.