Abstract: Under the radar forward-looking geometry, the imaging performance mainly depends on the array aperture and super-resolution imaging algorithm. Aiming at the problems of traditional large field-of-view (FOV) forward-looking imaging, namely, the high algorithm complexity and high system cost, this paper proposes a single-channel forward-looking radar imaging method based on digital coded metamaterials. Moreover, a threshold-segmentation method is utilized to realize the fine division of the large FOV. Combined with the digital coding of the metamaterial aperture, the local degree of freedom (DOF) of the spatial imaging is improved, and finally the fast and fine imaging of large FOV is achieved. On this basis, the statistical analysis of the performance of metamaterial aperture imaging theory and the proposed algorithm is conducted. The simulation results show that the proposed method solves the problem of traditional large FOV forward-looking imaging to a certain extent, and forms a set of systematic algorithms, which lays a foundation for the design of digital coded metamaterial radar detection and imaging system.