3-Dimensional Image Expansion Method by Incorporating RPM Imaging and Full Polarimetric Data for UWB Short Range Radar

Abstract

Ultra wideband (UWB) radar with high range resolution is promising for short-range 3-dimensional (3-D) imaging applications, such as a sensor for rescue robot in disaster scene. We have already proposed the efficient 3-D imaging methods as range point migration (RPM) method, which has a definitive advantage for SAR or time-reversal approaches, in terms of computational burden, high accuracy and high spatial resolution. However, if the aperture size is insufficient, this method cannot image the whole target structure. Conversely, useful information about the target structure can be extracted from the full polarimetric data. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel method that expands reconstructed RPM images by exploiting the full polarimetric data. This method introduces the ellipsoid-based scattering analysis and estimation, and significantly expands the original image by the RPM method by an aggregation of parts of ellipsoids. The results of numerical simulation based on 3-D finite difference time domain (FDTD) analysis verify the effectiveness of our proposed method.