A Coupling Strength Estimation Method Based on Circular Scanning Data

Coupling between complex structures causes extra scattering centers, which reduces the recognition rate of a target. Meanwhile, finding the coupled scattering centers and analyzing their coupling strength help to alleviate the computational burden by ignoring energy transition between weakly coupled structures. The coupling between two scattering centers is first studied in this letter. The trail function of the extra scattering center caused by the coupling effect in circular scanning mode is derived. The trails and the coupled scattering centers are then extracted using the differential evolution algorithm (DEA). The kernel idea of the coupled scattering determination is to find which two scattering points will cause such coupled trails with the help of the derived trail function and DEA. Following this, the value of each pixel on a trail is summarized to obtain the coupling strength for a pair of scattering centers. Simulation and measurements are finally performed to verify and show the performance of the proposed method. Results indicate that the proposed method accurately predicts the scattering centers with a coupling trail. We also estimate the coupling strength of the model plane, tank, and ship. Analysis shows that complex structures produce coupling scattering and provide more extra scattering centers.