Three-Dimensional Imaging of Spinning Space Debris Based on the Narrow-Band Radar

Abstract

In this letter, based on the narrow-band radar echoes, a 3-D imaging method for spinning space debris is proposed, which is named single-range 3-D imaging (SRTI). Not only the spinning nature but also the fact that the remainder phase trace after removal of spin contains the height information of the scattering center are taken advantage of in the SRTI. First, all the radar echoes in the observation time are divided into equal parts by the spinning period, and the traditional single-range 2-D imaging is made in each period. Then, the remainder phase trace of each scattering center is extracted via projection position separation, alignment, reconstruction, and spinning compensation. Finally, the height image of each scattering center is obtained from the remainder phase trace, which yields the 3-D image of the space debris. The simulation results for both the isolated point scattering centers and the continuous target have confirmed that the SRTI is able to reconstruct the 3-D shape of the spinning target effectively.