Rotational motion estimation for ISAR via triangle pose difference on two range-Doppler images

Rotational motion estimation is essential for inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging and understanding. For an object rotating with a constant acceleration, a closed-form solution is proposed to jointly estimate the initial rotating velocity (IRV) and the rotating acceleration (RA) by exploiting the pose difference of a triangle on two range-Doppler (RD) images. Then, the RA can be compensated with interpolation processing and an equivalent uniformly rotating object may be obtained. After that, the estimated IRV can be used to re-scale the RD image into the homogeneous range-cross range domain, or to provide more satisfactory imaging result via elaborated algorithms such as polar format algorithm or convolution back-projection algorithm. Finally, experimental results with both simulated and real airplane data are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.