Fast and multi-band RCS measurement based on a microwave photonic inverse synthetic aperture radar

With the rapid development of radar signature reduction techniques and increment of radar frequency band, fast and multi-band radar cross-section (RCS) measurement is highly required in fields such as radar detection and target recognition. This paper proposes a scheme for fast RCS measurement with multiple bands based on the microwave photonic inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR). With the advantages of frequency reconfigurable and large bandwidth provided by microwave photonics, RCS can be obtained from the multi-band and ultra-high resolution ISAR image based on Parseval's theorem with fast speed and high precision. In a proof-of-concept experiment, the target's RCS characteristics in the X, Ku, and Ka bands are analyzed, showing that the ISAR-based RCS measurement precision is about 0.5 dBsm in the near-field measurement with a measurement speed of about 70 ms each time.