Polarimetric bistatic-measurement facility for point and distributed targets

A fully polarimetric bistatic-radar facility has been constructed at the University of Michigan, to serve as a research tool for improved understanding of the nature of bistatic scattering for point and distributed targets. The facility is capable of operation at 10, 35, and 94 GHz, but only the 10-GHz system is described in the presentation. To meet both the size and design constraints both a horn antenna operating in the far-field, and a parabolic-dish antenna operating in a near-field focused mode, are utilized. A newly developed bistatic-calibration technique, using a flat metal plate, is used to calibrate the facility. Validation results, using a hemisphere over a conducting metal plate, show that the facility is capable of characterizing the radar cross section of a point target to within ±1 dB in magnitude and ±5° in polarization phase difference over a wide range of bistatic angles. Sample data for a point target and a distributed target are presented