A data compression technique for scattered fields from complex targets

A data compression technique to efficiently compress the scattered fields from complex targets is presented. Since at high frequencies the scattered fields from complex radar targets exhibit a highly localized behavior, the data compression technique is based on extracting and then sampling the responses associated with individual scattering mechanisms. The compression technique preserves the angle as well as the frequency variation of individual scattering mechanisms and, thus, leads to small reconstruction error. The proposed technique, however, is a lossy process in the sense that a tradeoff exists between the compression ratio and the data reconstruction error. The smaller the data reconstruction error, the smaller the compression ratio. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated by compressing measured scattered fields of a complex target.