Multi-frequency imaging of multiple targets in Rician fading channels

This paper presents an analysis of stability and resolution analysis of broadband (passive or active) array imaging in the Rician fading media. The main theoretical result is the stability condition KBN M where K is the Rician factor, B is the effective number of incoherent frequencies, N is the effective number of array elements and M is the number of sufficiently separated targets. The resolution performance of various imaging functionals is analyzed for the parabolic Markovian model. The imaging method is tested numerically with randomly distributed discrete scatterers. The numerical result with the Foldy–Lax formulation can be matched to the prediction based on the effective medium theory. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)