Radar Polarimetry for Target Discrimination

Discrimination of targets vs. clutter is critical to many radar identification problems. For the purpose of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detection, radar range profiles and images are valuable to capture the target of interest; it remains a big challenge to differentiate the target from the surrounding man-made clutter. The goal is to reduce the clutter. It is well-known that vector wave scattering is sensitive to both wave polarization and target orientation. This work makes use of ultra-wide-band (UWB) radar technology and polarization diversity to characterize targets with polarimetric signatures. The results were based on both radar measurement and electromagnetic simulation. This research demonstrated the effectiveness of radar polarimetry for improved target identification.