LAUSR

In this article, to accelerate data acquisition and image reconstruction procedures in a multistatic short-range microwave imaging scenario, an orthogonal coding approach with Fourier domain processing is presented. First, a special 2-D multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) structure is introduced to fully electronically synthesize the 2-D aperture. Then, the model of the transmitted and received signals by a MIMO stepped-frequency-modulated radar is presented, with special considerations about orthogonal, balanced, and optimal sequences. On the receiver side, the backscatter frequency response extraction process is formulated with the aim of obtaining individual information of all channels. Finally, based on the introduced model, a fast Fourier-based algorithm with reduced dimensions, named MIMO coded generalized reduced dimension Fourier (CGRDF), is mathematically derived. It includes extracting phase and amplitude compensators with the aim of mapping 4-D to 2-D spatial data, transferring the backscatter transfer function from the spatial domain to the wavenumber domain, extracting the smoothing filter, compensating the curvature of the wavefront of all scatterers, and extracting the reflectivity function and an additional range compensator. The results of numerical simulations show the satisfactory and reliable performance of the proposed approach in terms of the information retrieval process and processing speed.