A Fast and Accurate 3-D Reconstruction Algorithm for Near-Range Microwave Imaging with Handheld Synthetic Aperture Radar

The design of image reconstruction algorithms for near-range handheld synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems has gained increasing popularity due to the promising performance of portable millimeter-wave (MMW) imaging devices in various application fields. Time domain imaging algorithms including the backprojection algorithm (BPA) and the Kirchhoff migration algorithm (KMA) are widely adopted due to their direct applicability to arbitrary scan trajectories. However, they suffer from time complexity issues that hinder their practical application. Wavenumber domain algorithms greatly improve the computational efficiency but most of them are restricted to specific array topologies. Based on the factorization techniques as adopted in far-field synthetic aperture radar imaging, the time domain fast factorized backprojection algorithm for handheld synthetic aperture radar (HHFFBPA) is proposed. The local spectral properties of the radar images for handheld systems are analyzed and analytical spectrum compression techniques are derived to realize efficient sampling of the subimages. Validated through numerical simulations and experiments, HHFFBPA achieves fast and accurate 3-D imaging for handheld synthetic aperture radar systems with arbitrary trajectories.