Utilizing ISAR imagery to analyze the diffraction effects from leading and trailing edges of a target

Abstract

In this work, we analyze the effect of leading and trailing edge diffractions on two-dimensional (2-D) inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging of a complex target. The well-known shooting-bouncing ray (SBR) method [1, 2] combined with physical theory of diffraction (PTD) technique [3, 4] is employed to estimate the far-field scattered electric field from the target as a whole. The PTD method used in this paper to calculate a diffraction contribution for each ray hits the platform's surface vicinity of an edge. To show the effect of leading and trailing edge diffractions on 2-D ISAR images, first, a wing like test model and then a large complex platform are considered. It is demonstrated that the diffraction phenomena from the leading or the trailing edge becomes more distinctive on 2-D ISAR images if an appropriate polarization and illumination condition for the related edge is provided.