3D Imaging of Rapidly Spinning Space Targets Based on a Factorization Method

Three-dimensional (3D) imaging of space targets can provide crucial information about the target shape and size, which are significant supports for the application of automatic target classification and recognition. In this paper, a new 3D imaging of space spinning targets via a factorization method is proposed. Firstly, after the translational compensation, the scattering centers two-dimensional (2D) range and range-rate sequence induced by the target spinning is extracted using a high resolution spectral estimation technique. Secondly, measurement data association is implemented to obtain the scattering center trajectory matrix by using a range-Doppler tracker. Then, we use an initial coarse angular velocity to generate the projection matrix, which consists of the scattering centers range and cross-range, and a factorization method is applied iteratively to the projection matrix to estimate the accurate angular velocity. Finally, we use the accurate estimate spinning angular velocity to rescale the projection matrix and the well-scaled target 3D geometry is reconstructed. Compared to the previous literature methods, ambiguity in the spatial axes can be removed by this method. Simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.