Pattern-Coupled Sparse Bayesian Learning for Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging

We propose a pattern-coupled sparse Bayesian learning method for inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging by exploiting a block-sparse structure inherent in ISAR target images. A two-dimensional pattern-coupled hierarchical Gaussian prior is proposed to model the pattern dependencies among neighboring scatterers on the target scene. An expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm is developed to infer the maximum a posterior (MAP) estimate of the hyperparameters, along with the posterior distribution of the sparse signal. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.