Surface wave scattering on a drone air vehicle

Recent radar-cross-section (RCS) measurements on a generic drone air vehicle conducted at 34 GHz revealed a strong surface-wave scattering mechanism associated with the shadowed side, in contrast with expectations. Two-dimensional inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) images illustrating the scattering features are presented with the objective of documenting the experimental results. The measurements were conducted over a frequency band of 3.175 GHz centered on 34 GHz, and the RF sweeps were transmitted for every 0.04/spl deg/ of vehicle rotation. The wideband data were calibrated and gated about the vehicle and ISAR images were produced using a two-dimensional Fourier transform over frequency and aspect angle subsequent to resampling the polar formatted data. The total rotation angle involved in producing each image is 5.12/spl deg/.<
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