GRFT-based moving ship target detection and imaging in geosynchronous SAR

Geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar (GEO SAR) has great potentials in ship surveillance due to its high time resolution and wide swath coverage. However, the remote slant range will result in a very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of echoes that need to be enhanced by long-time coherent integration. The generalized Radon-Fourier transform (GRFT) can realize the coherent integration of moving target under long integration time by jointly parameter searching along range and velocity directions. Unfortunately, in GEO SAR, the very large slant range and long synthetic aperture will cause the curved synthetic aperture trajectory and non-negligible signal round-trip delay, leading to the failure of the traditional slant range and GRFT signal model for moving targets. This paper proposes an improved GRFT-based approach to realize the detection and imaging of moving ship targets in GEO SAR. Firstly, the accurate slant range for moving ship targets is constructed and the GRFT signal is redefined considering the curved trajectory and signal round-trip delay in GEO SAR. Then, GRFT responses to different motion parameters are analyzed. The procedures of moving ship targets detection and imaging in GEO SAR are presented through the detection with coarse-searched motion parameters in GRFT and the following imaging with fine-searched motion parameters based on minimum entropy. Finally, computer simulations verify the proposed GRFT-based method.