A novel super-resolution imaging method based on stochastic radiation radar array

A novel concept of stochastic radiation radar array (SRRA) is proposed to achieve super-resolution in real aperture staring radar imagery. Firstly, the definition of the temporal–spatial stochastic characteristics of the temporal–spatial stochastic radiation field (TSSRF) is presented. Then, a correlated imaging algorithm based on Gram–Schmidt orthogonalization (GSO-CIA) is proposed to reconstruct the target image using the echo signals and TSSRF. By the theoretical analysis, the super-resolution potentiality of staring imaging based on stochastic radiation radar array (SRRA-SI) is verified, which can overcome the resolution limitation of the real antenna aperture. The influences of the random transmitting signals and the configuration of the radar array (the number of array elements, the size array aperture, etc) on the stochastic characteristics of TSSRF are investigated in detail. Finally, numerical simulations are performed and the striking effect of super-resolution, which is more than 20 times compared with traditional real-aperture radar array, is demonstrated. (paper)