Sparse Targets Angular Super-resolution Reconstruction Method under Unknown Antenna Pattern Errors for Scanning Radar

Abstract

Scanning radar angular super-resolution technology is based on the relationship between the target and antenna pattern, and a deconvolution method is used to obtain angular resolution capabilities beyond the real beam. Most current angular super-resolution methods are based on ideal distortion-free antenna patterns and do not consider pattern changes in the actual process due to the influence of factors such as radar radome, antenna measurement errors, and non-ideal platform motion. In practice, an antenna pattern often has unknown errors, which can result in reduced target resolution and even false target generation. To address this problem, this paper proposes an angular super-resolution imaging method for airborne radar with unknown antenna errors. First, based on the Total Least Square (TLS) criterion, this paper considers the effect of the pattern error matrix and derive the corresponding objective function. Second, this paper employs the iterative reweighted optimization method to solve the objective function by adopting an alternative iteration solution idea. Finally, an adaptive parameter update method is introduced for algorithm hyperparameter selection. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve super-resolution reconstruction even in the presence of unknown antenna errors, promoting the robustness of the super-resolution algorithm.

Keywords

• scanning radar
• angular super-resolution
• unknown antenna pattern errors
• total least squares
• sparse reconstruction