Accurate Image Expansion Method Using Range Points Based Ellipse Fitting for UWB Imaging Radar

Yoriaki ABE  Shouhei KIDERA  Tetsuo KIRIMOTO 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications  Vol.E95-B  No.7  pp.2424-2432
Publication Date: 2012/07/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Sensing
Keyword: 
UWB pulse radars,  range points migration,  ellipse fitting,  image expansion, 

Full Text: PDF(3.7MB)

Summary: 
Ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse radars have a definite advantage in high-range resolution imaging, and are suitable for short-range measurements, particularly at disaster sites or security scenes where optical sensors are rarely suitable because of dust or strong backlighting. Although we have already proposed an accurate imaging algorithm called Range Points Migration (RPM), its reconstructible area is too small to identify the shape of an object if it is far from the radar and the size of the aperture is inadequate. To resolve this problem, this paper proposes a novel image expansion method based on ellipse extrapolation; it enhances extrapolation accuracy by deriving direct estimates of the observed range points distributed in the data space. Numerical validation shows that the proposed method accurately extrapolates part of the target boundary, even if an extremely small region of the target boundary is obtained by RPM.