Focused Lunar Imaging Experiment Using the Back Projection Algorithm Based on Sanya Incoherent Scatter Radar

Previous ground-based, radar lunar imaging experiments have usually employed the Range-Doppler (RD) algorithm. This algorithm performs in the frequency domain and has high computational efficiency. However, in the case of a long coherent integration time, the defocus phenomenon will appear, and the image will be smeared. This study proposes the use of the back projection (BP) algorithm to obtain focused lunar images to solve this problem. The BP algorithm is a time-domain algorithm which is frequently employed in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and can theoretically achieve the focused imaging of each pixel in an arbitrarily long coherent integration time. However, the largest drawback of this algorithm is its high computational complexity. Therefore, this study only applies this method to map local regions of the moon. We select Sanya incoherent scatter radar (SYISR) as the transmitting and receiving device and utilize the linear frequency modulation chirp pulse to transmit right-hand, circularly polarized electromagnetic waves and to receive left-hand, circularly polarized echoes. RD and BP algorithms are simultaneously adopted to image the Pythagoras crater region, and a contrastive analysis is performed. The results show that the BP algorithm can be well applied to a ground-based, radar lunar imaging experiment and that it has a better focusing performance, but the effect is not as obvious as expected. Thus, the processing method needs to be further improved. In addition, the computational efficiency of BP is very low, and certain fast algorithms need to be applied to improve it.