Influence of the magnitude and phase errors on the reconstructed radar images

Our research work has been focused for several years on ISAR techniques and ATR using superresolution radar imagery. The anechoic chamber of ENSIETA at Brest and the associated measurement facilities allow us to obtain radar signatures for various scale reduced targets and to reconstruct their radar images using a turntable configuration. The paper investigates an aspect which has a great influence on the quality of the reconstructed images. We use two canonical targets, a single sphere and a set five spheres, in order to have perfect control of the target configuration and to make the interpretation of the obtained results easier. The idea of the paper is quite simple and was suggested by some errors in the scattering center positioning we detected on the reconstructed images. Hence, we decided to investigate the influence of the magnitude and the phase of acquired signatures on the scattering center position estimation.