Measurement of persistent scatterers in manmade targets

An important question concerning the practical feasibility of radar target identification is whether specific scatterers on a target can be observed over relatively large aspect angle sectors. Using turntable data on a fighter aircraft, we demonstrate that this is indeed the case. We show that essentially the same scatterers can be observed when the aspect angle is changed in steps from 5 degrees to 70 degrees. Although some scatterers on the fuselage cannot be observed at the larger aspect angles, this is due to the fact that the data allowed implementing a crossrange resolution of only 4 ft. This implies a lack in resolution performance along the fuselage as the aspect angle becomes larger. The loss of some scatterers at larger aspect angles thus is due to poor resolution rather than a lack in scatterer persistence.