THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF RADAR SCATTERING FROM CONDUCTING AND DIELECTRIC TARGETS IN THE RESONANCE REGION

A theoretical and experimental study is undertaken to investigate the radar scattering of various three-dimensional targets. The targets considered have prismatic structure and are made of either perfectly conducting or dielectric materials. The surface integral equations are formulated by the equivalence principle in terms of equivalent surface electric and magnetic currents. A moment method is then used to reduce the integral equations to a matrix equation to compute the current coefficients. Polarimetric measurements are carried out on a variety of targets at linear polarization. In order to determine the complex-scattering matrix, amplitude and phase of both co- and cross-polar returns are measured for linearly polarized signals. Good agreement between numerical and experimental results is obtained. Brief details of both measurement and theoretical methods are presented.