Full Polarimetric Bistatic Radar Imaging Experiments on Sets of Dielectric Cylinders Above a Conductive Circular Plate

This paper presents fully polarimetric bistatic radar scattering measurements on groups of dielectric vertical and/or tilted square cross-sectional cylinders above a conductive circular plate in the frequency range of 6-18 GHz. The experiments have been conducted in the BABI facility at the French Aerospace Lab (ONERA). The imaging experiments consider an azimuthal bistatic radar configuration with a single incident direction and many scattering directions, in the way that the receiver positions synthesize a 1-D circular aperture in a horizontal plane around the focal point of the anechoic chamber. The bistatic scattering by the different sets of cylinders is also achieved through numerical simulations by using a volume-electric-field-integral-equation model employing a method of moments. First, theoretical and experimental bistatic radar-cross-section values are confronted. The comparisons show a good agreement for all polarization cases (vv, hv, vh, and hh). Then, a near-field reconstruction algorithm has been extended from a monostatic to our bistatic radar configuration in order to generate the reflectivity maps by focusing both theoretical and experimental scattered fields. The comparisons of the 2-D bistatic synthetic aperture radar images show that the two prediction techniques are accurate.