We propose a novel improved characteristic basis function method (IP-CBFM) for accurately analysing the radar cross section (RCS). This new IP-CBFM incorporates the effect of higher-order multiple scattering and has major influences in analyzing monostatic RCS (MRCS) of single incidence and bistatic RCS (BRCS) problems. We calculated the RCS of two scatterers and could confirm that the proposed IP-CBFM provided higher accuracy than the conventional method while significantly reducing the number of CBF.

Case studies have reported that pedestrian detection methods using vehicle radar are not complete systems because each system has specific limitations at the cost of the calculating amounts, the system complexity or the range resolution. In this letter, we proposed a novel pedestrian detection method by template matching using Gabor filter bank, which was evaluated based on the data observed by 24GHz UWB radar.

The diffraction by a thin material strip is analyzed for the H-polarized plane wave incidence using the Wiener-Hopf technique together with approximate boundary conditions. An asymptotic solution is obtained for the case where the thickness and the width of the strip are small and large compared with the wavelength, respectively. The scattered field is evaluated asymptotically based on the saddle point method and a far field expression is derived. Scattering characteristics are discussed in detail via numerical results of the radar cross section.

The design and performance evaluation is presented of a partially adaptive array that suppresses clutter from low elevation angles in atmospheric radar observations. The norm-constrained and directionally constrained minimization of power (NC-DCMP) algorithm has been widely used to suppress clutter in atmospheric radars, because it can limit the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss to a designated amount, which is the most important design factor for atmospheric radars. To suppress clutter from low elevation angles, adding supplemental antennas that have high response to the incoming directions of clutter has been considered to be more efficient than to divide uniformly the high-gain main array. However, the proper handling of the gain differences of main and sub-arrays has not been well studied. We performed numerical simulations to show that using the proper gain weighting, the sub-array configuration has better clutter suppression capability per unit SNR loss than the uniformly divided arrays of the same size. The method developed is also applied to an actual observation dataset from the MU radar at Shigaraki, Japan. The properly gain-weighted NC-DCMP algorithm suppresses the ground clutter sufficiently with an average SNR loss of about 1 dB less than that of the uniform-gain configuration.

Rain attenuation can drastically impact the service availability of satellite communication, especially in the higher frequency bands above 20 GHz, such as the Ka-band. Several countermeasures, including site and time diversity, have been proposed to maintain satellite link service. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a power boost beam method, which is an adaptive satellite power control technology based on using rain radar data obtained throughout Japan to forecast the power margin. Boost beam analysis is considered for different beam sizes (50, 100, 150, and 200km) and beam numbers (1-4 beams) for a total of 16 cases. Moreover, we used a constant boost power corresponding to the rainfall rate of 20mm/h. The obtained results show that in comparison to the case with no boost, the effective rain intensity in each boost case was reduced.

Antenna radiation patterns have side-lobes that add to ambiguity in the form of ghosting and object repetition in SAR images. An L-band 1.27GHz, 2×5 element proximity-coupled corner-truncated patch array antenna synthesized using the Dolph-Chebyshev method to reduce side-lobe levels is proposed. The designed antenna was sim-ulated, optimized, and fabricated for antenna performance parameter measurements. Antenna performance characteristics show good agree-ment with simulated results. A set of antennas were fabricated and then used together with a custom synthetic aperture radar system and SAR imaging performed on a point target in an anechoic chamber. Imaging results are also discussed in this paper showing improvement in image output. The antenna and its connected SAR systems developed in this work are different from most previous work in that this work is utilizing circular polarization as opposed to linear polarization.

Recently, Doppler radars have been used in various applications from the detection and the classification of indoor human activities to the detection of airplanes. To improve both the degrees of freedom (DOF) and the estimation accuracy of the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of targets, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar has received much attention in recent years. The temporal spatial virtual array based on Doppler shift of a moving target has been one of methods to improve DOA estimation accuracy. However, the DOA estimation accuracy based on the method depends on the velocity and the direction of the target on which we focus. Also, the temporal spatial virtual array should be generated based on the information of the single target. Thus, it is difficult to implement the method if there are multiple targets. In this paper, we propose a new method that provides high accuracy of DOA estimation by using the temporal spatial virtual array without dependence on the velocity, the direction and the number of existing targets. We demonstrate the DOA estimation accuracy and the effectiveness of the proposed method via simulations.

Bistatic multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar has the capability of measuring the transmit angle from the receiving array, which means the existence of information redundancy and benefits data association. In this paper, a data association decision for bistatic MIMO radar is proposed and the performance advantages of bistatic MIMO radar in data association is analyzed and evaluated. First, the parameters obtained by receiving array are sent to the association center via coordinate conversion. Second, referencing the nearest neighbor association (NN) algorithm, an improved association decision is proposed with the transmit angle and target range as association statistics. This method can evade the adverse effects of the angle system errors to data association. Finally, data association probability in the presence of array directional error is derived and the correctness of derivation result is testified via Monte Carlo simulation experiments. Besides that performance comparison with the conventional phased array radar verifies the excellent performance of bistatic MIMO Radar in data association.

In this paper, a new scheme is presented for ground moving target indication for multichannel high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) SAR systems with modified reconstruction filters. The conventional steering vector is generalized for moving targets through taking into account the additional Doppler centroid shift caused by the across-track velocity. Two modified steering vectors with symmetric velocity information are utilized to produce two images for the same scene. Due to the unmatched steering vectors, the stationary backgrounds are defocused but they still hold the same intensities in both images but moving targets are blurred to different extents. The ambiguous components of the moving targets can also be suppressed due to the beamforming in the reconstruction procedure. Therefore, ground moving target indication can be carried out via intensity comparison between the two images. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by both simulated and real airborne SAR data.

Radar cross section (RCS) of a patch array antenna is reduced using a switchable absorption/transmission surface. The switchable surface performs as between a radar absorber and transmission surface using diodes at 9GHz. The switchable surface was applied to the radome of a patch array and its radiation pattern and RCS reduction were evaluated. The gain and the radiation pattern with the radome was equivalent to that without the radome. The RCS reduction with the radome was 25dB compared to that without the radome.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is significantly deteriorated by the random phase noises which are generated by the frequency jitter of the transmit signal and atmospheric turbulence. In this paper, we recast the SAR imaging problem via the phase-corrupted data as for a special case of quadratic compressed sensing (QCS). Although the quadratic measurement model has potential to mitigate the effects of the phase noises, it also leads to a nonconvex and quartic optimization problem. In order to overcome these challenges and increase reconstruction robustness to the phase noises, we proposed a QCS-based SAR imaging algorithm by greedy local search to exploit the spatial sparsity of scatterers. Our proposed imaging algorithm can not only avoid the process of precise random phase noise estimation but also acquire a sparse representation of the SAR target with high accuracy from the phase-corrupted data. Experiments are conducted by the synthetic scene and the moving and stationary target recognition Sandia laboratories implementation of cylinders (MSTAR SLICY) target. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed SAR imaging algorithm.

The characteristic basis function method using improved primary characteristic basis functions (IP-CBFM) has been proposed as a technique for high-precision analysis of monostatic radar cross section (RCS) of a scattering field in a specific coordinate plane. IP-CBFM is a method which reduces the number of CBF necessary to express a current distribution by combining secondary CBF calculated for each block of the scatterer with the primary CBF to form a single improved primary CBF (IP-CBF). When the proposed technique was evaluated by calculating the monostatic RCS of a perfect electric conductor plate and cylinder, it was found that solutions corresponding well with analysis results from conventional CBFM can be obtained from small-scale matrix equations.

We propose an effective technique for estimation of targets by ground penetrating radar (GPR) using model-based compressive sensing (CS). We demonstrate the technique's performance by applying it to detection of buried landmines. The conventional CS algorithm enables the reconstruction of sparse subsurface images using much reduced measurement by exploiting its sparsity. However, for landmine detection purposes, CS faces some challenges because the landmine is not exactly a point target and also faces high level clutter from the propagation in the medium. By exploiting the physical characteristics of the landmine using model-based CS, the probability of landmine detection can be increased. Using a small pixel size, the landmine reflection in the image is represented by several pixels grouped in a three dimensional plane. This block structure can be used in the model based CS processing for imaging the buried landmine. The evaluation using laboratory data and datasets obtained from an actual mine field in Cambodia shows that the model-based CS gives better reconstruction of landmine images than conventional CS.

The RCS of a radar target is an important factor related with the radar performance such as detection, tracking and classification. When dealing with the design of 26/79GHz automotive surveillance radar system, it is essential to know individual RCS of typical vehicles and pedestrian. However, there are few papers related to the RCS measurement at 26 and 79GHz. In this letter, the RCS measurements of typical vehicles and pedestrian were performed in a large-scale anechoic chamber room and the characteristics are discussed.

Ultra-wideband radar exhibits high range resolution, and excellent capability for penetrating dielectric media, especially when using lower frequency microwaves. Thus, it has a great potential for innovative non-destructive testing of aging roads or bridges or for non-invasive medical imaging applications. In this context, we have already proposed an accurate dielectric constant estimation method for a homogeneous dielectric medium, based on a geometrical optics (GO) approximation, where the dielectric boundary points and their normal vectors are directly reproduced using the range point migration (RPM) method. In addition, to compensate for the estimation error incurred by the GO approximation, a waveform compensation scheme employing the finite-difference time domain (FDTD) method was incorporated. This paper shows the experimental validation of this method, where a new approach for suppressing the creeping wave along the dielectric boundary is also introduced. The results from real observation data validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of highly accurate dielectric constant estimation and embedded object boundary reconstruction.

Microwave systems have a number of promising applications in surveillance and monitoring systems. The main advantage of microwave systems is their ability to detect targets at distance under adverse conditions such as dim, smoky, and humid environments. Specifically, the wide bandwidth of ultra-wideband radar enables high range resolution. In a previous study, we proposed an accurate shape estimation algorithm for multiple targets using multiple ultra-wideband Doppler interferometers. However, this algorithm produces false image artifacts under conditions with severe interference. The present paper proposes a technique to suppress such false images by detecting inconsistent combinations of the radial velocity and time derivative of image positions. We study the performance of the proposed method through numerical simulations of a two-dimensional section of a moving human body, and demonstrate the remarkable performance of the proposed method in suppressing false image artifacts in many scenarios.

The MIMO technique can improve system performance of not only communication system but also of radar systems. In this paper, we apply the MIMO radar with enhanced angular resolution to the indoor location estimation of humans. The Khatri-Rao (KR) matrix product is also adopted for further angular resolution enhancement. We show that the MIMO radar with the KR matrix product processing can increase the number of virtual elements effectively with suitable element arrangement, hence higher angular resolution can be realized. In general, the KR matrix product processing is not suitable for coherent radar because of signal correlation. However, when targets signals have enough Doppler frequency differential against each other, this approach works well because the signals are decorrelated. In addition, Doppler filtering is introduced to remove unwanted responses of stationary objects which make human detection difficult with conventional methods. Computer simulation and experimental results are provided to show performance of the proposed method.

With extensive use of automotive radars, mutual interference between radars has become a crucial issue, since it increases the noise floor in the frequency domain triggering frequent false alarms and unsafe decision. This paper introduces a mathematical model for a frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar in interfering environments. In addition, this paper proposes a time-domain interference suppression method to provide anti-interference capability regardless of the signal-to-interference ratio. Numerical results are presented to verify the performance of a 77GHz FMCW radar systme with the proposed method in interference-rich environments.

Satellite-borne or aircraft-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is useful for high resolution imaging analysis for terrain surface monitoring or surveillance, particularly in optically harsh environments. For surveillance application, there are various approaches for automatic target recognition (ATR) of SAR images aiming at monitoring unidentified ships or aircraft. In addition, various types of analyses for full polarimetric data have been developed recently because it can provide significant information to identify structure of targets, such as vegetation, urban, sea surface areas. ATR generally consists of two processes, one is target feature extraction including target area determination, and the other is classification. In this paper, we propose novel methods for these two processes that suit full polarimetric exploitation. As the target area extraction method, we introduce a peak signal-to noise ratio (PSNR) based synthesis with full polarimetric SAR images. As the classification method, the circular polarization basis conversion is adopted to improve the robustness especially to variation of target rotation angles. Experiments on a 1/100 scale model of X-band SAR, demonstrate that our proposed method significantly improves the accuracy of target area extraction and classification, even in noisy or target rotating situations.

Microwave ultra-wideband (UWB) radar systems are advantageous for their high-range resolution and ability to penetrate dielectric objects. Internal imaging of dielectric objects by UWB radar is a promising nondestructive method of testing aging roads and bridges and a noninvasive technique for human body examination. For these applications, we have already developed an accurate internal imaging approach based on the range points migration (RPM) method, combined with a method that efficiently estimates the dielectric constant. Although this approach accurately extracts the internal boundary, it is applicable only to highly conductive targets immersed in homogeneous dielectric media. It is not suitable for multi-layered dielectric structures such as human tissues or concrete objects. To remedy this limitation, we here propose a novel dielectric constant and boundary extraction method for double-layered materials. This new approach, which simply extends the Envelope method to boundary extraction of the inner layer, is evaluated in finite difference time domain (FDTD)-based simulations and laboratory experiments, assuming a double-layered concrete cylinder. These tests demonstrate that our proposed method accurately and simultaneously estimates the dielectric constants of both media and the layer boundaries.