Experiments in bistatic scattering phenomenology

This paper describes a fully-polarimetric bistatic radar test bed system developed for large bistatic angle scattering studies of aircraft targets and terrain surfaces. The radar consists of a high power (1 MW) S-band transmitter and a remote, dual-polarized receiver separated from each other over baseline distances up to 30 km. The transmitter emits vertically (V) and horizontally (H) polarized pulses on alternate pulse repetition intervals, and the receiver simultaneously measures the V and H components of the scattered wave. Phase coherence is maintained between the transmitter and receiver subsystems by using atomic (cesium) clocks to stabilize the microwave oscillators at the two equipment sites. This permits computation of the polarization scattering matrix and the Stokes operator of the scatterers, thereby retaining full polarimetric information about the scattering process. The design and hardware configuration of the radar are given in this paper, and bistatic scattering measurements of forested terrain clutter and a small aircraft are presented.