Bistatic Scatterer And Antenna Imaging

Two computing techniques to create an image of the radiating centres on an antenna or scatterer using Fourier optics is presented. Steve Inge died on October 24, 2002 at the age of 61 after this article was submitted for publication. The reviewers accepted this article subject to revisions. Since that is not possible, this article is published as submitted. The late Ian McEnnis, Chief Antenna Engineer at Broadcast Communications Limited in New Zealand, and one of Steve1s colleagues, notified us of his death and had the following remembrances of Steve, which we print below. Steve had been with our organization for 42 years. His immense intellect enabled him to become a "guru" in any area he focused on. Most of BCL's in house engineering software has been developed by Steve. BCLIPPS (BCL's Interactive Planning and Propagation Software) was Steve's crowning. It has formed the basis of our coverage work for the past 10 years and has enabled us to be a leader in this area. Steve was the engineer who solved the most difficult of problems and he was the one his colleagues turned to when they were having difficulty. His mathematical ability was awesome and once he got his teeth into a problem he would not let it go until he had it sorted. There is nothing Steve liked more than to share his knowledge with others. Having said all that, in the end Steve was just a "good bloke" who will be sorely missed by many. ---------------------------------------------------------------Introduction Bistatic k-space (BSKS) imaging from antenna currents was introduced by John Shaeffer et al (Ref 1). It is a technique to graphically show the active radiating centers on a conducting body. The currents on the body are found using either a computer program or measurements, for a particular excitation. The excitation may be a plane wave being scattered by the body, or sources on the body for an antenna. This paper describes two simple approaches to imaging a radiator.