Analysis of the Robustness of Bistatic Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar in the Presence of Phase Synchronisation Errors

Bistatic inverse synthetic aperture radar (B-ISAR) has the potential to become the radar imaging tool for obtaining noncooperative target images in arbitrary bistatic configurations. A monostatic ISAR processor is used here to form B-ISAR images and its robustness is tested with respect to phase synchronisation errors and rapidly time-varying bistatic configurations. Specifically, the B-ISAR point spread function (PSF) is analytically derived and the problem of B-ISAR image autofocusing is reformulated in such conditions. It is shown that, in most bistatic scenarios, the range-Doppler (RD) based monostatic ISAR processor is able to form focussed B-ISAR images. Simulation results are used to support the theoretical results.