Near-field radar cross section of complex structures

Abstract

This paper concerns the computation of the near-field radar cross section (RCS) of a complex structure such as a ship or an aircraft. We develop a physical optics-based scheme that allows the computation and summation of reflections from different parts of a structure. These reflections arrive at different angles at the near-field observation point. This is in contrast to the far-field case where all the reflections arrive at the same angle at the observation point at infinity. We show the results of our computations for some simple canonical shapes, as well as some complex structures, and compare them with the results obtained from other methods.