ISAR Tomography for Full-Polarimetric 3-D Radar Cross-Section Measurements

Radar cross-section (RCS) images are valuable for understanding the 3-D target scattering center distribution of objects. However, 3-D RCS imaging requires more complex measurement systems and much more data points compared to conventional 2-D methods. A reduction of measurement effort can be achieved by using a tomographic technique based on amplitude-phase-spectrum estimation, scale-invariant feature transform image registration, and constant false alarm rate detection. Besides an amplitude spectrum, the proposed method also obtains the phase spectrum of the scattering center distribution, which allows the application of polarimetric decompositions. The generation of full-polarimetric 3-D images is demonstrated based on measurement data obtained in a compact antenna test range. Since all relevant scattering mechanisms can be identified, the approach proved to be useful for an advanced understanding of the scattering mechanisms occuring at radar targets.

[1]  Antonio Torralba,et al.  SIFT Flow: Dense Correspondence across Scenes and Its Applications , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[2]  Richard Bamler,et al.  Very High Resolution Spaceborne SAR Tomography in Urban Environment , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[3]  T. Dallmann,et al.  Principal Component Analysis for polarimetric radar cross-section imaging , 2016, 2016 10th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP).

[4]  D. Heberling,et al.  Comparison of APC and Feed-APC using field Probing measurements of the Quiet Zone , 2013, 2013 7th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP).

[5]  Matteo Nannini,et al.  Imaging of targets beneath foliage with SAR tomography , 2008 .

[6]  Jian Li,et al.  Amplitude estimation of sinusoidal signals: survey, new results, and an application , 2000, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[7]  Helmut Essen,et al.  High Resolution Tower-Turntable ISAR with the Millimetre Wave Radar COBRA (35 / 94 / 220 GHz) , 2008 .

[8]  Laurent Ferro-Famil,et al.  Under-Foliage Object Imaging Using SAR Tomography and Polarimetric Spectral Estimators , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[9]  Jian Li,et al.  Performance analysis of forward-backward matched-filterbank spectral estimators , 1998, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[10]  Matthijs C. Dorst.  Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints , 2011 .

[11]  Dirk Heberling,et al.  Discrimination of scattering mechanisms via polarimetric rcs imaging [measurements corner] , 2014, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.

[12]  Mark A. Richards,et al.  Fundamentals of Radar Signal Processing , 2005 .

[13]  M. Peichl,et al.  3D Tower-Turntable ISAR Imaging , 2007, 2007 European Radar Conference.

[14]  R. Moch,et al.  A tomographic approach to polarimetrie radar cross-section imaging , 2017, 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP).

[15]  E. Pottier,et al.  Polarimetric Radar Imaging: From Basics to Applications , 2009 .

[16]  Kostas Papathanassiou,et al.  First demonstration of airborne SAR tomography using multibaseline L-band data , 1999, IEEE 1999 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. IGARSS'99 (Cat. No.99CH36293).

[17]  Dirk Heberling,et al.  A reference target for polarimetric radar cross-section measurements , 2014, The 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2014).

[18]  Eugene F. Knott,et al.  Radar Cross Section Measurements , 1993 .