Optimal Imaging Time Interval Selection Method for Space Target via Time-Frequency Analysis With Spaceborne ISAR.

The Doppler frequency of the echo signal exhibits time-varying and high-order characteristics due to the high-speed relative motion between the satellites in spaceborne inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of space target, even during a short coherent processing interval (such as 1 s). Therefore, the selection of the optimal imaging time interval (OITI) is crucial to obtain a well-focused image. The existing methods do not consider the fact that the OITIs of scatterers on the target can also vary significantly. In this letter, an OITI selection method for spaceborne ISAR imaging of space targets based on the time–frequency analysis is proposed. First, the differences in optimal imaging instants (OIIs) of scatterers are analyzed. Then, based on the combination of the Margenau–Hill–spectrogram (MHS) and the S-method, the time–frequency curves can be obtained after extracting the time–frequency ridge and polynomial fitting. The OII of the entire target can be estimated after eliminating the differences in the OIIs by multiplying the constructed third-order phase terms with the signal. Finally, a more suitable OITI can be obtained because of the elimination of the differences in the OIIs. The effectiveness and advancement of the proposed method are verified by simulation and real data results.