Electromagnetic Modeling in the Spectral Domain for Polarimetric Radar Applications: Theoretical Framework

Abstract : A vectorial Fourier-based technique for electromagnetic (EM) wave reconstruction with application to polarimetric airborne and spaceborne radar data exploitation is presented. The approach provides a comprehensive picture of scattering through an electromagnetic-based formulation of equivalent sources and introduction of vector scattering functions. The method is different from conventional modeling techniques for SAR applications as result of the full electromagnetic treatment of field interaction with the scatterer, the possibility of introducing new and controllable feature classes for target classification, and the accurate decomposition of source impulse response function that avoids potential errors (e.g., loss of coherent information) associated with the spherical phase approximations. In addition to including the potential for high quality image formation, the capability of extracting target or scatterer information, such as coherent radar cross section (RCS) is explored. It is highlighted how target image and information processing can be optimized and tailored for a desired scenario (e.g., the required information type, the nature of the targets) by applying the developed model and devising appropriate inversion techniques to aid data processing in support of exploitation.