Undistorted and Consistent Enhancement of Automotive SAR Image via Multi-Segment-Reweighted Regularization

In recent years, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology has been increasingly explored for automotive applications. However, automotive SAR images generated via the matched filter (MF) often exhibit challenges such as noisy backgrounds, sidelobe artifacts, and limited resolution. Sparse regularization methods ave the potential to enhance image quality. Nevertheless, conventional unweighted ℓ1 regularization methods struggle to address cases with radar cross section (RCS) distributed over a wide dynamic range, often resulting in insufficient sidelobe suppression, amplitude distortion, and inconsistent super-resolution performance. In this paper, we propose a novel reweighted regularization method, termed Multi-Segment-Reweighted Regularization (MSR), for automotive SAR image restoration. By introducing a novel weighting scheme, MSR localizes the global scattering point enhancement problem to the mainlobe scale, effectively mitigating sidelobe interference. This localization ensures consistent enhancement capability independent of RCS variations. Furthermore, MSR employs multi-segment regularization to constrain amplitude within the mainlobes, preserving the characteristics of the original response. Correspondingly, a new thresholding function, named Thinner Response Undistorted THresholding (TRUTH), is introduced. An iterative algorithm for enhancing automotive SAR images using MSR is also presented. Real data experiments validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.