An Efficient MMW 3-D Imaging Algorithm for Near-Field MIMO-SAR With Nonuniform Transmitting Array

In this letter, an efficient millimeter-wave (MMW) frequency-domain imaging algorithm is presented for 3-D object reconstruction of the near-field multiple-input–multiple-output synthetic aperture radar (MIMO-SAR) with nonuniform transmitting array. For each single-input–multiple-output (SIMO) case of the MIMO-SAR setup, the precise spectral echo expression is derived by spherical-wave decomposition and fast Fourier transform (FFT) operations. To obtain the linear phase in range direction, the multiorder approximation theory is employed to expand the coupling phases, and thus the target subimage can be reconstructed by utilizing phase compensation, central wavenumber approximation, and inverse FFT. Finally, the fully focused 3-D image for MIMO setup will be realized through accumulating all the SIMO subimages. Compared with the existing representative algorithms, our method avoids complicated interpolation and achieves high-quality fast imaging with only matrix multiplication and a small amount of iteration operations. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.