Electromagnetic vector sensors and active target localization and identification

A new model for actively localizing and identifying targets using electromagnetic vector sensors is developed and analyzed. Target dependent variables are introduced that provide a natural parametrization of the statistics of the target´s reflection characteristics (scattering matrix) to arbitrarily polarized transmitted signals. Cramer-Rao bounds on the variance of unbiased estimators of these parameters are derived to show how an estimator´s expected performance depends on the target´s state and the transmitted signal. The parameters are shown to have physical interpretations and to represent characteristics intrinsic to the target.<>