Aircraft attitude estimation using simultaneous monostatic and bistatic ISAR images

Attitude motion determination of a non-cooperative target is a challenging problematic in ISAR imaging. This article presents a method to estimate the normal of the aircraft using the fusion of simultaneous monostatic and bistatic ISAR images. This estimate is obtained by computing the linear transformation that provides the best match between the point clouds associated with the ISAR images. This method is applied on images generated from real data collected during a bistatic S band radar campaign on commercial aircrafts. It yields an estimate of the attitude which is consistent with ground truth data.