RIS-Aided Radar Imaging Utilizing the Virtual Source Principle

Abstract: This paper investigates signle-antenna radar imaging with a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). Configuring phase shifts in a RIS-aided radar system can be thought as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging with a moving virtual source. With this perspective, the problem is modeled in the wavenumber domain and image forming algorithms are formulated for near and far field regions. Thus, a novel and intuitive perspective has been introduced to the RIS-aided radar imaging formation problem, opening a new avenue for adapting well-known SAR methods in the literature to these systems.