Three-dimensional (3D) ISAR imaging is an effective imaging technique which allows to overtake some interpretability issues typical of bidimensional imaging systems and to enhance the potential of Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) algorithms. 3D ISAR depends strongly on the autofocus procedure and its reconstruction capacity relies onto scattering centers extraction and phase estimation. This paper introduces a new algorithm that exploits the polarimetric information to improve the scattering centers extraction procedure (CLEAN technique). The aim of the developed technique is to exploit the separability of the scattering centers in the polarimetric domain and therefore to improve the accuracy of the scattering centre estimation. Additionally, polarimetry adds information about the scattering mechanism of each scatterer that can be used to recognize the target. Performance analysis of the proposed technique is carried out, by means of simulated data.
Keywords: Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR), Interferometry, Polarimetry, 3D ISAR imaging
