Bi‐ISAR sparse imaging algorithm with complex Gaussian scale mixture prior

The performance of both autofocusing and imaging resolution degrades using the traditional autofocusing and range–Doppler algorithm for bistatic inverse synthetic aperture radar (Bi‐ISAR) with sparse apertures. A Bi‐ISAR sparse imaging algorithm based on complex Gaussian scale mixture (CGSM) prior is proposed to jointly achieve the high‐resolution imaging and autofocusing. First, a sparse basis matrix with the time‐varying bistatic angle is constructed to represent the sparse echo data and the Bi‐ISAR joint with autofocusing imaging model is established based on compressed sensing from sparse apertures. Second, the elements of the target image and the noise are assumed to be a CGSM prior with Gaussian distribution, respectively. Finally, the sparse image reconstruction and phase autofocusing are accomplished by the variational Bayesian expectation maximisation method. The proposed algorithm with the full Bayesian inference can obtain a well‐focused image without manual adjustments of regularisation parameters. Meanwhile, it can avoid the local minimum and structural errors, due to utilising the statistical information of a posterior. Simulated results of electromagnetic numerical data verify the superiority of the algorithm in autofocusing, sparse imaging and noise suppression performance.