Method and system for microwave imaging with multiple-input and multiple-output (mimo) synthetic aperture radar (sar)

A system, comprising:

• a memory storing instructions;
• one or more communication interfaces;
• and
• one or more hardware processors coupled to the memory via the one or more communication interfaces, wherein the one or more hardware processors are configured by the instructions to:
• receive one or more back-scattered signals from at least one object at a target as an input, wherein the one or more back-scattered signals are received when the at least one object at the target is scanned by one or more periodic blocks of array of sensors, and wherein the one or more back-scattered signals are stitched to form an entire aperture array;
• rearrange the one or more back-scattered signals to generate one or more sub-array elements, wherein the one or more sub-array elements are visualized as translated and decimated arrays of the entire aperture array;
• compute a Fourier transform (FT) of the one or more sub-array elements by deploying a two dimensional (2D) Fast Fourier transform (FFT) to obtain a two dimensional (2D) Fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the one or more sub-array elements, wherein the Fourier transform of the one or more sub-array elements are relatively equivalent to a weighted superposition of one or more sub bands of the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array;
• vectorize the 2D FFT of the one or more sub-array elements to obtain one or more vectorized sub-array matrices, wherein the one or more vectorized sub-array matrices are stacked to form one or more stacked sub-array matrices, and wherein the one or more stacked sub-array are relatively equivalent to a stacked sub band of the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array using a precomputed weight matrix;
• reorder the stacked sub bands of the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array to obtain a two dimensional (2D) Fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the entire aperture array;
• and
• estimate a three-dimensional (3D) reflectivity function of the target from the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array.

One or more non-transitory machine-readable information storage mediums comprising one or more instructions which when executed by one or more hardware processors cause:

• receiving one or more back-scattered signals from at least one object at a target as an input, wherein the one or more back-scattered signals are received when the at least one object at the target is scanned by one or more periodic blocks of array of sensors, and wherein the one or more back-scattered signals are stitched to form an entire aperture array;
• rearranging the one or more back-scattered signals to generate one or more sub-array elements, wherein the one or more sub-array elements are visualized as translated and decimated arrays of the entire aperture array;
• computing a Fourier transform (FT) of the one or more sub-array elements by deploying a two dimensional (2D) Fast Fourier transform (FFT) to obtain a two dimensional (2D) Fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the one or more sub-array elements, wherein the Fourier transform of the one or more sub-array elements are relatively equivalent to a weighted superposition of one or more sub bands of the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array;
• vectorizing the 2D FFT of the one or more sub-array elements to obtain one or more vectorized sub-array matrices, wherein the one or more vectorized sub-array matrices are stacked to form one or more stacked sub-array matrices, and wherein the one or more stacked sub-array matrices are relatively equivalent to a stacked sub band of the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array using a precomputed weight matrix;
• reordering the stacked sub band of the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array to obtain a two dimensional (2D) Fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the entire aperture array;
• and
• estimating a three-dimensional (3D) reflectivity function of the target from the 2D FFT of the entire aperture array.